


a fruit that's death to taste

by maleficently



Series: the fatal plunge [1]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 03:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 34,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568385
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maleficently/pseuds/maleficently
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma has hidden her face behind a curtain of unruly hair for now, but manages to tip it back on command--and Regina looks down at Emma’s chest and the heart she knows is beating there; wonders absently if any of her problems would be solved if she just plucked it out and kept it in her jewelry box upstairs--and looks at her with the kind of anguish that really and truly doesn’t befit a storybook savior.</p><p>“The curse.  It didn't break right,  so how do I fix it?”</p><p>[Part 1 of a 3-part post-curse AU that mostly ignores Season 2 developments; see the notes for details.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is an AU that takes and changes bits and pieces of Season 2 canon. For instance: it ignores Ruby's S2 episode and it has Emma and Mary Margaret back in Storybrooke after their sojourn to FTL without really accounting for HOW they got back--but then it retains the Daniel storyline and Henry's move in with the Charmings. This truly is not the happiest piece at the outset, so here are a few warnings and explanations.
> 
> The basic premise:
> 
> \- I think (and seriously, this is just my opinion) that the last seven episodes have been disingenuous to the characters of Regina and Emma, in that I don't think either of them would adjust well at all to the post-curse reality they're living in. My starting point for this story is a) Emma is not actually fine with being part of a "family" now and b) Regina has absolutely nothing left to live for that isn't Henry, and he's not receptive to her presence in his life at all, so... If this sounds bleak, it's because it is.
> 
> \- The town boundary thing drives me insane. Why is it still there? If the curse actually broke, there is no reason for people to not be permitted to leave, so it's a contrivance that the show doesn't care to explain.
> 
> \- Finally, I'm intensely annoyed at the fact that nobody is mounting a coup against Charming, who has appointed himself to be the head honcho but doesn't actually have anything to back that up with; given how many people, good or bad, Regina swallowed up in her curse, surely there must be more dissident factions in town than just King George?
> 
> What follows plays with those three concepts in equal measure and it's the first (complete) part of a three part story that I am piecing together; each part will only get posted as it's finished and has been proofread, but the entire thing has been carefully plotted and I know exactly where I'm going. Without wanting to ruin anything, I will stress that the tagged pairing will become the focal point of the story eventually.
> 
> I'll take this moment also to thank the friends who have talked the story through with me (ad infinitum) and who have gone over everything I've written so far with a fine-toothed comb; invaluable little helpers, and all credit for this being half-decent goes to them.

 

a fruit that's death to taste

the fatal plunge: part one

______________

_  
__In which the savior loses, the queen finds an ending, and the dark one laughs all the way home._

______________

_I cast off my identity_  
 _And take the fatal plunge_  
Sylvia Plath, “Family Reunion”

______________  

_You don’t know what it means to win  
_ Fleetwood Mac, “Never Going Back Again”

______________  

_Here is a queenship no mother can contest ---  
_ _A fruit that's death to taste: dark flesh, dark parings._  
Sylvia Plath, “The Beekeeper’s Daughter”

______________  

_I was neither_  
 _Living nor dead, and I knew nothing_  
T.S. Eliot, “The Wasteland”

______________  

_I imagined ashes_  
 _And us alone, always us alone_  
Matthew Good Band, “The Rat Who Would Be King”

______________  

_If I've killed one man, I've killed two---  
_ Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”

______________  


	2. Chapter 2

No one comes to see her for a stretch of time so enduring that by the time a knock finally sounds on the door, the seasons have changed; her apples have all fallen, now, without outside interference, without a basket to catch them.  They litter the overgrown grass like the heads of too-large-fairies or too-small-dwarves, gleaming like still-wet blood in the setting sun.  
  
It’s autumn, and she’s lost her grip on everything in the town, including her house.   The paint by the front door is chipping like nail varnish sloppily applied while idling in front of a traffic light.  Once, a peasant from a distant kingdom that had gotten swept up in her curse would have stopped by with a paintbrush in exchange for a check, but as things stand, the woodwork simply withers.  
  
Regina wonders if she, too, looks withered, no matter how much she cannot give up the idea of making herself presentable.  Her hair is carefully blow-dryed every morning, the remnants of a bottle of product scraped out with her carefully-kept nails, spread around her fingertips and smoothed through the ends as she looks in the mirror and thinks of faces she won’t see in one of those, again.  
  
The knock repeats as she walks to the front door, pulling her suit jacket taut, the clicking of her heels even on the tiles as she makes sure not to step on a single crack.  Her approach stutters as she places the sound as coming from _too high_ , but then smooths out again when it occurs to her that Henry is looked after, now.  He would never show up alone.  
  
She reaches for the door handle with a carefully sucked-in breath, cottoning her lungs and tumbling down into her gut, and then feels her face fall when she opens up and Henry is not there.  
  
Instead, it’s _her_.  
  
“I need your help,” the Sheriff says, words slurring out like a slowly-unfurling snake.  She swoons forward as they leave her mouth, and if not for the fact that she’s posing as a makeshift crucifix--wrists hitting the door frame on each side--Emma Swan would have crashed right into her.  For now, only her head lolls forward, all those blonde curls springing up against the carefully brushed-down black of Regina’s jacket.  
  
“With what?” Regina asks, in lieu of the more courteous and obvious _are you all right?_ She’s seen this woman in all states short of labor, and nothing keeps her down for long.   _That_ would be the kind of pointless question that Emma’s _mother_ might voice, with a look full of loving concern.    
  
Seasons may have come and gone, but they haven’t brought Regina any ability to fake either care or remorse.  Whatever remains in her chest, throbbing away from day to day, has very much lost its ability to embrace life so fully.  
  
“You have to fix it,” Emma sort of gurgles at her, before plummeting the rest of the way.    
  
Princesses fall hard, when they fall; Regina re-learns this not-unimportant lesson when she lands on her ass on the white marble, Emma’s head pressed up against her jacket buttons and her hand grappling for leverage on Regina’s thigh.  
  
“It didn't work, and I don't know who else to ask.”  
  
Regina stares up at the intricate carvings on the ceilings, the dusty chandelier that hovers above them, and presses her front teeth together for a few moments before saying, “Ask _what_ , Sheriff?  Use your words, if you think you can manage.”  
  
Emma has hidden her face behind a curtain of unruly hair for now, but manages to tip it back on command--and Regina looks down at Emma’s chest and the heart she _knows_ is beating there; wonders absently if any of her problems would be solved if she just plucked it out and kept it in her jewelry box upstairs--and looks at her with the kind of anguish that really and truly doesn’t befit a storybook savior.  
  
“The curse.  It didn't break _right_ ,  so how do I fix it?”  
  
The girl--and girl is all she is; the days of consciously ignoring the fact that her own _sixty-fifth_ birthday is forthcoming are gone, now--is thick-tongued and bleary-eyed, but somewhere at the center of her is the kind of presence of mind that only comes with a great loss of faith.  
  
It’s an odd clarity to find in someone who has only _gained_ , lately.  
  
Regina starts to say that there is nothing to 'fix', and as her jaw starts to unlock, considers if she wants to know why on earth _Emma Swan,_ of all people, would want her to play with curses again, but when her mouth actually opens, all she manages is, “How much have you had to drink?”  
  
“Not enough,” Emma says, chin dipping once more, and then she laughs shortly.  
  
It’s a hideous sound; a kind of tortured bark Regina has let go of herself, every so often.  
  
She’s not sure if it’s pity or awareness of the fact that any alliances she might be able to garner with _a Charming_ can only bring her closer to Henry, but something has her pushing the surprisingly weightless form--as if Emma has been hollowed out from the core--on top of her away almost gently.  “Sober up, Sheriff Swan, and we can talk about your concerns in the morning, if you insist.”  
  
“No, we can't,” Emma says, sentence trailing off in a pathetic hiccup; she’s little more than a tangle of jeans, boots, and ungainly limbs as Regina gets back to her feet, closes the front door, and reconsiders the mess on her floor.  “Do you have any idea how much it took for me to come here at all?”  
  
“By the looks of you, at least one bottle of whiskey,” Regina says, dryly, leaning back against the closed, paint-chipped door.  
  
Emma crushes out another one of those brittle dog-laughs and then wipes at her eyes with rough movements, like she’s not all too concerned about gouging one out.  Regina crosses her arms across her chest and waits; she’s waited for so long now, a few more minutes will not mean a difference.  
  
“I don't know whose idea of a happy ending this is, but they are one sadistic fuck,” Emma finally says, managing to shift onto her knees and then resting like that, almost in supplication.  
  
Regina finds that it’s not nearly as satisfying as it ought to be, seeing her destined nemesis with a lowered head.  “Family life not everything you'd hoped, dear?"  
  
Whiskey-eyed or not, the Sheriff isn't above giving her a warning look, just for a second, but then everything obstinate and proud about her slinks away again. "They want to go back," she then admits, brokenly.  
  
"Back?"  
  
“To whatever the fuck it’s called.  The land through the portal.  Where you’re the queen and Mary Margaret’s the queen and I’m a princess and--”  
  
“ _Home_ ,” Regina supplies.  
  
Emma chortles and then coughs, her hair getting stuck to the corner of her mouth, shiny with gloss and liquor.  “They want me to come, and to bring Henry.”  
  
“Of course they do,” Regina says, placidly, as the Sheriff makes an uncoordinated attempt to get up to her feet; her booted toes slip on the tiles and she lands on her knees, hard.  Bruises will blossom on the skin there, black and painful, and Regina licks at her lips for a second before saying, “I’ve heard that in some families, saying _no_ is acceptable.”  
  
If Emma wasn’t wallowing in bourbon and self-pity, she’d recognize that for the gift and opportunity it was, but the girl just pushes at the ground again, managing to get upright this time.  A squinty eye rakes over Regina’s face, laden with sarcastic dissent.  “Really?  So you think it’d be okay for me to just--nah, I only just met you guys, and I know you love me and all, but I’m not really digging my fairy tale origins?  You think they’d _get_ that?  That it’d be _fine_?”  
  
“Perhaps not, no,” Regina says.  “I imagine that would … hurt them.  Very much.”  
  
“Yeah.  And I don’t _want_ to hurt them.  They’re... I don’t know them, at all, really, but they’re good people.  … Snow and Charming, I mean.”  Emma runs a hand through her hair and then lets it dangle limply by her side.  She doesn’t look like she knows it, but her fingers automatically curl around an object that isn’t there; a sword, Regina thinks, and feels her anger swell against the small, airtight container she’s tried to keep it locked in lately.  
  
For Henry’s sake.  
  
“Sounds like quite the dilemma, Miss Swan,” she finally says.  “I truly don’t see how this has anything to do with the curse I cast, though.”  
  
“Something has to have gone wrong,” Emma stresses again, looking as hapless as Henry had on his first day of kindergarten, sucking in a harried breath and then stammering, “If it really broke, I wouldn't feel like--I _can’t_ \--”  
  
“Ah,” Regina says.  
  
The rage she’s learned to live with, but cannot ever truly contain, abates for the time being; slinks away to a place where it won’t drive her actions, and that’s enough to get her to push away from the door and move to the side of a woman-girl who has cost her _everything_.  
  
Apparently, Emma’s unwitting heroics haven’t left Emma herself unscathed.  
  
“They won’t let you come,” Emma adds, after a moment.  She lifts her chin fully, and Regina raises her eyebrows when a reddish mark finally becomes apparent, blooming softly on her cheek.  “We had... an argument about that, earlier.”  
  
“You _want_ me to join you.  To a land full of magic,” Regina says, narrowing her eyes.  
  
“No,” Emma says, running a knuckle under her nose and then smiling almost sadly.  “But you’re not _my_ mother.  I wouldn’t... I don’t know, Regina.  It doesn’t seem right, to not let him make that choice when he’s older, and less...”  
  
“Angry,” Regina fills in, as Emma fidgets in front of her and then sways again.  
  
“I don’t want to … _lose_ them.  But they don’t need me.  He does.  And he also needs you.”  
  
More than one _not anymore_ goes unspoken, and Regina runs her tongue past the backs of her teeth, slowly, before saying, “You’re their _child_ , Sheriff.  Whatever your differences are now--”  
  
“She’s pregnant,” Emma says.  They’re a crack, those words; it’s almost as if a gun went off in the space between them, and it’s more than enough to make Regina shut up and take a step back.    
  
It doesn’t need elaborating on.  Other people might have pointed out a thing or two about how one child can never take the place of the other, but those people don’t live with the consequences of a curse; they can’t put themselves in the place of parents who have spent twenty eight years forgetting-but-knowing that they are missing a _baby_.  
  
“What makes you think the curse lingers?” Regina asks, more quietly.  
  
“I don’t know; the barrier?  We can’t leave this place, and that seems pretty _wrong_ \--like, if all the bad magic left, then why are we trapped here?  And...”  Emma closes her eyes briefly, and then stares at the ground.  “If these are happy endings, they wouldn’t want...  we’d feel like a _normal_ family, wouldn’t we?  And Ruby wouldn’t have to live the rest of her life knowing that she’d killed her one true love; Archie would have more than just a conscience, and... just a few days ago, August spent half an hour freaking out about a splinter in his hand because he lied to his father about going out _drinking_ with me...”  
  
“Magic comes at a price, dear.  You can't--”  
  
"And then there's you. If I'm supposed to bring back everyone's happy endings, where is _yours_?” Emma continues, so rationally that it almost makes up for a year of watching this woman bluster from fruitless endeavour to zealously stupid pursuit.  
  
Somehow, Regina manages to not say the first thing that comes to mind on that topic, but the allusion to it is clear when she says, "I can't help you, Sheriff. Not only are you living the opposite of a cursed existence, meaning I highly doubt there is anything I can do for you, but I promised my son that I wouldn't resort to magic again."  
  
“Yeah, okay--so what about _his_ happy ending, huh?  Do you really think it’s out _there_?”  
  
Those words hang heavy as the impending cold front, seeping in from the Atlantic and soon to blister the entirety of Storybrooke all over again.  
  
“This world--it’s a _better_ place for him to grow up in.  I know you think it’ll kill you to agree with me, but you’ve got to give me that much.  I don't care if he doesn't want you using magic.  This is bigger than that, and if he’s got a problem he can talk to me about it."  
  
“You’d risk his trust in you over--” Regina starts to say, the skin on her forehead drawing tight in disbelief.  
  
Emma rubs at her warm-blooded cheek and then, eyes wet, says, “What _else_ can I do, Regina?  You're the one who left us this mess--and everyone keeps telling me I'm the savior, so _here I am_. Trying to save us all.”  
  
However much she feels she isn’t living a happy ending, it seems there is still a way for Miss Swan to go before she really, truly _understands_ what desperation feels like--but she’s getting closer than anyone who is supposedly victorious should be.  
  
It’s why it’s almost disappointing, to have to admit that she’s asking for something that doesn't exist.  
  
Looking at the hopeless-yet-hopeful Sheriff, Regina decides that she’ll delay that confession as long as possible, given that Emma appears to be the only thing stopping her from losing Henry forever; a delicious irony, she knows, given that the half-witted and impulsive girl in front of her is also the only reason that Henry ever was hers at all.  
  
“All right, Sheriff.  Since you’ve invited yourself in--and since this so clearly affects my _son,_ why don’t I go and make us some coffee, and I'll tell you what I know about curses,” she says, managing the kind of smile she used to conjure up out of thin air, back when she still had _some_ power.  
  
The relief in Emma’s eyes is as palpable as all those littered apple heads in her backyard are.


	3. Chapter 3

Of all the houseguests she never thought she would have, Emma Swan is a pinnacle.  Tonight, though, Emma Swan’s boots hit the floor near the foot of the guest bed, toppling over like corner towers on a ruined castle.  The princess herself follows, landing roughly on dark purple sheets and only tugging haplessly at the leather jacket constricting her arms when she’s already down.  
  
For all the times that Regina’s pulled clothing on and off another human being in the last ten years, the idea of helping out _here_ seems more alien than the notion of forgiveness.  
  
“Can you--maybe call Henry, let him know I’m okay,” Emma sighs, pressing her cheek to silk that hasn’t ever been slept in.  The house simply came with a guest room.  This wasn’t a room she’d carefully constructed for an eventual occupant, but one she copied out of an issue of _Good Housekeeping_ when she’d first spun this entire world together.  
  
The citizens don’t remember, but once, they _all_ lived in the asylum, crowded in the cells there like brooding hens in an industrial dairy farm, squawking at each other without a single idea of what had befallen them.  It had taken her a while--an understatement--to take the bare fabric of the township she’d transported them to and turn it into something _inhabitable_.  There had been so many choices to make, and this bedroom had been as low on the list of priorities as the nursery had been, once.  
  
Thinking of it makes her womb--barren for two lifetimes, now--ache, the way amalgam fillings do when they close around crinkling silver candy wrappers.  
  
Much as her citizens can’t remember those twenty eight years as anything other than a catastrophic tangle of wires, she can’t remember the exact moment when she woke up and thought that there may be a panacea for the absence of _true love_ out there, in this land without magic.  She just _did_.  
  
And God, has it _cost_ her.  
  
She wants to make a point of it, of how willingly she’s paying that price; wants to ruthlessly remind the Sheriff that she’s not the one who needs _invitations_ to talk to Henry, not by the law that Emma herself so desperately hides behind whenever it suits her, but before she can, Emma’s eyes shutter.    
  
With a final, deep sigh, the sheriff wipes at her mouth with her thumb, then lets it rest a few inches away from her mouth.  She’s no more than a somnolent toddler now that she’s no longer drunk, and Regina has no interest in fighting a _child_.  
  
Not even a child curious about committing memorial genocide,  at the off chance it'll produce a slightly better existence.  
  
Emma is every bit as terrifying to her as Henry was, those first few months, when it felt like every single whispered step she took might be the _wrong_ one; and so Regina ends up leaving the room, closing the door on the eggshell and lilac vision she’d borrowed from an unfamiliar realm, shutting out the princess snoring away on the queen-size there.  
  
If she ends up making a phone call, it definitely isn’t for _Emma’s_ sake.  
  
…  
  
Daylight restores the fragile status quo that has existed, post-curse.    
  
She’s reading the Mirror in her study with a cup of lukewarm espresso next to her when the scuffle of boots sounds on the stairs.  Emma sort of stumbles into view and then walks past her study, before backtracking and awkwardly hovering in the doorway for a moment, like a kid caught with the cookie jar.  
  
“Hey,” she then says, wincing against the daylight filtering in through the sheer curtains that line the back wall of the house.  “Sorry about--”  
  
“How much do you remember?” Regina asks, taking a sip just to gain an extra few seconds of studying the sheriff.  It had been nearly impossible to tell if she’d been serious, last night, with most of her faculties impaired in a way that could have, ironically, gotten her arrested.  
  
Emma runs a tired-looking hand through her hair, snagging it in the tangled ends, and then just sighs and stares at the ground.  “Enough.  Look, it was--I shouldn’t have come.  There’s just been so much that’s changed lately and...”  
  
“And running isn’t an option,” Regina surmises, lowering her cup back to desk and spinning her chair until she’s facing Emma more directly.  
  
“Yeah, well, not without total memory loss, which...”  
  
“Which you're only willing to risk inflicting on us all _if_ it's for the greater good,” Regina says, smiling faintly.  “Very noble of you, Sheriff Swan.”  
  
Emma exhales shakily and then closes her eyes, pressing her thumb and index finger on her right hand up against her eyelids and rubbing hard.  “Yeah, I probably did say that.  I didn’t... I didn’t _mean_ it.  What you did, it basically fucked up _everyone’s_ life.  I’m not doing anything that might make that even worse, so... I’m sorry I put you out last night.”  
  
Regina doesn’t bother saying that it’s fine, because it’s _not_ , but placidly keeps looking at Emma anyway, taking in her wrinkled, untucked shirt, mascara halfway down her cheeks.  
  
“I’m just going to--” Emma mumbles, jabbing her thumb towards the front door.  
  
“Before you do,” Regina says, as Emma turns on her toes and starts moving, shoulders hunched in something like embarrassment.  “One question.”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Your _parents’_ plan, to leave me here and take Henry.  Was _that_ part true?”  
  
Emma can’t see the way her right hand starts shaking in her lap; the paper, full of useless information that is mostly being printed because the very much _stuck_ people of Storybrooke need a purpose, covers it completely.    
  
Emma looks back at her, barely, and then says, “I meant what I said.  I won't let them do that.”  
  
The temptation to ask after Henry, to ask for more than the sparse sentences of _all right_ and _nothing_ that she got when she called last night, is strong, but she swallows it down with the last bitter dregs of her coffee and listens to the front door shut again.  
  
Then, it’s once again simply her and her dilapidating house, weathering the changing times outside.  
  
…  
  
The book of magic pulses with a kind of danger that once would have scared her, but now just has her feeling nostalgic for a time when the dangers of magic still felt like the worst thing that could befall her.  
  
She takes it to her bedroom and slips on her reading glasses, shimmying under the thick down duvet that she bought for both herself and Henry for the unbearably cold winter months, and lets it fall open for her on its own.  There’s using magic and then there’s _being_ magic, and when the pages start flipping, they draw from her without any participation on her part.  
  
When they pause, it’s on a painting of a set of potions; the pages are crisp and new-smelling, as if her mother had never bothered going this far into learning the art.  And why would she have had to?  Her control came with binding and blood and the beating of hearts.  
  
The words fill the empty spaces in her head; the most powerful potion of all is one crafted of true love, whereas the most wicked of all--and Rumpelstiltskin’s spidery scrawl here cuts a little deeper, grooves dug into the page--is one crafted from the end of true love.  The ingredients needed to cast that one are so familiar to her that she doesn’t need to see them printed; they are merely a testimony to his experimentation and the control he exercised over her life for so long.  
  
Her eyes flicker back to the violet potion, the one borne of true love, and what all it promises to do; restore, recover, heal.  
  
It cannot undo _death_ , but it can undo the absence of nearly everything else.  
  
Nursing a hangover that probably _feels_ like death, the living embodiment of that potion is wandering around town right now, avoiding her family.  
  
No, the curse is definitely a thing of the past, Regina decides, and lets the book fall shut; her hand curls around one of the legs of her glasses and slides them off, then folds them shut inside of her fist.    
  
Curses belong to a different realm, a different _life._ Even if they did not _,_ there is only one heart powerful enough for her to replicate her earlier magic, and she won’t _ever_ touch it, no matter what Emma Swan believes needs remedying.  
  
The book drops to the floor and she lowers her glasses down onto her nightstand, before staring at the ceiling for a very long time indeed.  
  
Time is all she has now.  She’ll wait, as either Snow or Charming will make the first move to separate her from her son forever.    
  
Reprisal has _always_ been her forte, and it’s one of very few things she doesn’t expect to have changed, now.


	4. Chapter 4

The summons for the town meeting comes sooner than expected.  
  
It’s dropped off by Charming; the only postman in all the realms to carry around a sword, though at least he has surrendered his shield to his daughter again.  For a few moments, as she’s contemplating whether or not he’ll invite himself in this time, he looks a little guilty; but then that steely farm-bred stubbornness masks anything he might otherwise feel again, and he sticks out his hand out with a curt, “Here.  Three days from now.”  
  
Regina takes the flyer and looks at it absently.  
  
“I see Sidney is no longer doing the lettering for town documentation,” she then says, raising an eyebrow at the Sharpie-penned summons for a _Vote on the Future_.    
  
The way they’re letting all the little things slip, after so many years of her carefully guarding them, is an unexpected annoyance; not a sword to the chest, but a thumb tack stuck to the sole of her foot.  
  
The way James’ face flushes with heat is amusing, but he manages not to rise to the bait for once.  "Everyone gets a vote.  I’d use it, if I were you.”  
  
“Ah, democracy,” Regina says, placidly, and folds the flyer in half, cupping it in one hand.  “Will Henry be there?”  
  
Grudgingly, James nods; and then even more grudgingly, he says, “It’s been suggested to us that we might not want to make him feel like the woman who raised him was actually a serial killer without remorse.  That that might be … damaging, to his development.”  
  
“Your daughter is really taking to this _white knight_ motif, isn’t she.”  
  
Charming cracks his neck, so quickly it’s barely noticeable, and then twists his mouth into a grimace.  “Actually, this came from Jiminy.”  
  
Regina considers pointing out that the cricket’s psychology degree is a figment of her imagination, but the urge dissipates when she thinks about genuine offers made to help Henry, and to help... well.  Someone who can’t be helped.   It leaves a sour taste in her mouth, to think badly of the man.    
  
“I see,” she finally says, when James won’t stop looking at her expectantly.  
  
“We won’t stop him from seeing you.”  
  
“I didn’t realize you _were_ ,” Regina says, and then, leaning against the doorframe a little deliberately, adds a slow, “ _Yet_ , anyway.”  
  
James is starting to let his hair grow long; it curls at the nape of his neck, brushing against the collar of his leather jacket--a hereditary mark of juvenile taste, apparently--and makes him look altogether even less suitable to _rule_ than he did when he was still shepherding goats.  
  
The fact that Snow is obviously running the show is a temporary relief; petty and selfish though she may have been her entire life, the fairest one of all has always been surprisingly capable.  
  
“Emma told you,” Charming finally says, his voice tight and small.  “She warned you.”  
  
“You say that like I have _options_ ,” Regina says, smiling thinly.  “What do you think I’ll do, _James_?  Streak across the boundary with him and pray that we’ll both remember who we are?  I’m _evil_ , not _ignorant_.”  
  
Red colors his face again, and the sword shifts in the scabbard slung across his back, but as he runs a hand across his face, Regina realizes that he’s not exactly what he seems to be, either.  
  
When he looks back at her and says, “She doesn’t want to come, does she?”, Regina finds herself reluctantly feeling pity for the man, for possibly the second time ever.  
  
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I suppose that this... _vote_ will tell.”  
  
He looks confused, like he’s unsure if she’s to be taken at face value, and then just steps back and off her steps, down the unswept path, and into the truck he’s taken to driving around the town in an attempt to keep the locals calm.  
  
Even without seeing what they’re doing, Regina can almost _feel_ them stir, and knows now that Charming will head straight for his precious Snow, warning her that a coup may be being staged in an unlikely corner.  
  
If she can’t be involved in any political intrigue herself anymore, watching this unfold from a distance--or, as the flyer will permit, from up close--will have to do as a substitute.  
  
…  
  
As soon as she walks into the courtroom, it falls silent.  
  
Dense seconds follow, until Henry voices a careful, “Hi, Mom” from next to Emma; the sheriff’s hand is on his shoulder, and for a second Regina thinks she’s restraining him, but then she sees it for what it is: no more than a small safety harness for a child whose life has been through too many changes in too short a time.  
  
She strides down the aisle without looking at her subjects, only nodding at Archie Hopper when she passes him--and what an unlikely ally she’s found, there--and then coming to a gentle stop in front of Henry, bending over to look at him.   He seems well-fed, but his eyes are skittish, like there is too much going on for him to keep track of.  
  
The most she feels comfortable with, given who is standing behind him, is running a hand across his hair and then cupping his cheek for a second.  Even then, the “ _Henry_ ” she voices gives up whatever air of indifference she’d managed with her silent entrance.  Her son looks uncomfortable by the blatant emotion in front of so many people--and so she pulls it back, straightening again and then looking at Emma, who looks back at her with the same kind of expression that Henry is currently wearing.  
  
It occurs to her only then that, free to come and go as she may be, they think of her as little more than an imprisoned Head of State; someone to be treated with some measure of respect, but not to be granted immunity for all the crimes committed.  A novel concept of this world, like so many; and the way Emma’s eyes can’t hold hers for more than a few seconds suggests that _more_ than a vote, this is also her trial.  
  
The door to the judge’s chambers opens and out comes Snow, wearing the type of vest and cape that she’d adopted whilst running for her life.  The fact that she favors that part of her wardrobe suggests that it should be easy for her to adjust to the fact that the little princess she once gave up isn’t exactly dying to be taken to her first cotillion in a lovely light-blue dress; but the way that Emma’s eyes drift to her parents, and then lower back to Henry’s, says it all.  
  
Snow keeps her chin held high, and Regina glances at the lowest three buttons on that vest; wonders when a slight swell will develop there, and where they’ll all be by then.  
  
It’s enough to make her regret that Emma’s desire to see the curse _truly_ break is no more than an aimless wish; the kind that the Genie might have seen fulfilled, once upon a time, except his are among the few powers that appear gone forever.  
  
Abruptly, it bothers her.  It bothers her _generally,_ that Emma’s drunken complaints about her lot in life weren’t entirely ridiculous; certain parts of the curse have evaporated as if they’d been nothing more than whispers of breath exhaled into the cold morning air, while others--such as the boundary--linger on.   
  
None of the books that remain at her house are of any help, and the mausoleum--where the rest remain--has been carefully blocked off by Charming ever since his wife and daughter were idiotic enough to bring her mother back from the other world.  
  
She flinches at the mere thought, and then glances around the room again, noting that as far as dangerous prisoners go, her mother is apparently deemed a greater concern than she is.  Yet another minor way to disappoint, she thinks, as Snow whistles loudly--two fingers inelegantly jammed into her mouth--and calls the meeting to order.  
  
The front row appears to be reserved for Emma, Ruby Lucas and her grandmother, Henry, and herself, on one side; she half-expects a crossbow to be stuck under her chin, bolt nudging against the soft flesh there, but Eugenia just looks at her sharply and then directs her full attention to Snow.  
  
“Our land still exists,” Snow declares, when the murmurs at the back of the room die off.  “It’s not what it was when we left; our homes have been ravaged, and the earth in some places is so scorched that I doubt it’s arable, but it’s there and waiting for us to occupy it again.”  
  
She lets those words sink in for impact, scanning the room with all the authority that only one born to power can--as it is _literally_ in her blood, and she positively teems with it--and then looks at Charming, expression softening in a way that makes Regina feel like her flesh is shriveling.  
  
“I know that a lot has changed.  That we all have twenty eight years of memories of a land without kings and queens, without magic, without--our other halves.  I know that I can’t assume that I am still your queen; in fact, I think that so much has changed that I don’t think I’ll ever feel like a queen again.  But--you all once trusted me to rule you, and I would ask that you allow me to at least steer us towards having a government again.”  She smiles for a second, but it doesn’t quite reach her eyes; they’ve sharpened with age and experience.  “If that’s not enough, do remember that I spent twenty-eight years teaching elementary schoolers about the tenets of democracy, so I’m fairly sure I can organize an American-style election.”  
  
That earns her a few laughs, as well as some scattered applause, and she raises her hand to get the room to silence again.  It’s so unintentionally regal that Regina almost joins those laughing, but it would be taken the wrong way, and her position here is tenuous enough.   
  
“Regardless of who you want in charge, we have important decisions to take about where we want to _be_.  However much Storybrooke is a place familiar to us, it’s not our home.  We all know that; _remember_ it, now.  And, though I’ve had a very long time to turn my apartment here into a place I can live in, it doesn’t have the memories that the Enchanted Forest holds.  I miss--being able to look out of my window and see the lake; I miss being able to ride down the path towards Red’s cabin and know that a wood full of fairies waits for me there.  I miss--”  
  
Her voice cracks on the last word, and it’s accompanied by a look directly at Emma, who shifts as it hits her and stares down at her hands, clasped together tightly on her lap, thumbs running along her knuckles.  
  
“I miss the life that I built there, the hopes and dreams that I had for our land,” Snow finishes, quietly.  Charming steps in closer, as if she’s going to faint with pure emotion; he always _has_ underestimated her, and it’s one of the more irritating aspects of their enduring love.  
  
“As do I,” he then says, sliding a hand around her waist; his fingertips curl towards the life that’s slowly growing there, and Emma’s right leg bounces unexpectedly.  
  
“We have a proposal,” Snow continues, voice measured once again.  "We would like to start over.  To build the world we love in the image of who we are now; to give our families, our children a chance to experience the wonders of our home.  But we cannot forget who we've been, all this time, or what our lives have been. So... we start over. We elect leaders; we decide on what manner of community we want to be. We forget that before, some of us were kings and queens and others were maids, seamstresses, farmers. We start over as equals, and we make our home a reflection of who we all are."  
  
Her voice gains in strength as she goes, and there is both clarity of purpose and conviction in what she's proposed. A true blend of the regent and the school teacher, Regina thinks, as behind her, Leroy shouts, "You got my vote, sister--both for your plan and for the presidency."  
  
A chorus of agreement sounds and Snow laughs a little, looking down at the ballot box as if she's overwhelmed with being adored. Truly, she ought to be used to it by now.  
  
Charming points to the back of the room. "Go ahead."  
  
"Hua Mulan, warrior and personal guard to Her Royal Highness Princess Aurora," a business-like but young female voice sounds.  "As most of you will know, we recently escaped our realm with dangerous prisoners who had unparalleled command of magic.  How will we prevent them from using it to overpower us once we return?"  
  
Whoever Hua Mulan is, Regina can't help but wish she'd been around sooner; already, she seems more capable than both Graham and Sidney had ever been.  She doesn't blink, when everyone else on her row turns to look at her; just looks at Henry and feels abrupt gratitude that he's never met his grandmother.   
  
Snow and Charming exchange a look, and then she lifts her chin. "We propose to leave them here."  
  
That really gets the crowd going, and Regina crosses her legs and braces herself for a long debate in which her voice will make no difference at all.  The most she can do is hope for a favorable verdict, but hope...  
  
No, hope is not something she’s familiar with anymore.


	5. Chapter 5

The discussion is civil for the most part, townspeople willing to act like schoolchildren with hands in the air, and their teacher delegating the discussion appropriately.  Many voices echo Mulan’s concern about their prisoners--and, though it goes unspoken, the concern is clearly not merely about her mother and Captain Hook, but also applies to her--but a few ask more technical questions.  Ella’s, for instance, is, “Can we bring things back with us?”  
  
“As in our possessions?” Snow asks, looking at Charming quickly.  “To an extent, but these magic portals--they don’t permit a whole lot to be carried through.”  
  
“Well, what about medicine?  Alex is due for another few shots in a few months time, and I don’t see why she shouldn’t get them.  Death in early childhood is far more common in our realm than it is here, and I would like to see that stopped,” Sean chimes in.  
  
At the sound of approving murmurs from most of the town, Snow nods.  “I understand--though obviously, what we take is subject to general constraints.  I would say that medicine and personal items take precedence over...”  
  
“Indoor plumbing?” Jefferson calls out, resulting in a few laughs.  
  
Snow manages a small smile, but the strain of the conversation is starting to show.  If she’d been expecting unbridled enthusiasm, she really _has_ underestimated what twenty-eight years of living in Storybrooke has done to her subjects.  “Again, if anyone has memories of engineering, I’m sure we can make our best efforts to restore a lot of the conveniences that we’ve become used to, here.”  
  
People talk softly to their neighbors for a few moments, and then a burst of black movement to Regina’s left has Snow giving another nod.  “Okay--Red, go ahead.”  
  
The room quiets, and when Regina looks over, a deep frown mars Ruby Lucas’ forehead; her teeth are sharply digging into her bottom lip, and then she looks to the front of the room and sucks in a deep breath.  
  
“What if... what if we don’t want to go?”  
  
Everyone stops talking, and Snow freezes as if she’s been struck by an arrow, or caught in a web-like spell.  Charming steps in closer to her and holds her by the waist, tight now, but defers; he always has.  After a few moments, Snow’s features contort in confusion, and then she asks, “What do you mean?”  
  
Ruby hesitates for a few seconds, but then gets to her feet and takes a few steps until she’s in front of the table with the ballot box, and rubs her hands together nervously.  “Look--most of you know me.  Most of you know _both_ of me, actually, and … you’ll have noticed that I’m without a certain cape here.  The curse that brought us here didn’t bring it--” and Red looks at Regina a little accusingly, “--but it doesn’t really matter, because I don’t _need_ it, here.  I’ve gone … twenty eight years without changing.  Twenty eight years without taking a _life_.  It was a burden I didn’t think I could ever escape, and though I’ve learned to live with it and learned to manage it, that is not a life I want to go back to if I can avoid it.”  
  
When Regina half-turns to look over her shoulder, she sees most of the people of Storybrooke looking away in discomfort.  It suggests that while they feel Red’s plight, they don’t feel it _enough_ to let it sway their opinion.  
  
At least, not until Archie Hopper gets to his feet and clears his throat, toying with the knot in his tie briefly.  “I know how Red feels.  I’ve spent--twenty eight years helping people in a real body.  It might not sound like a lot, but you’d be surprised how much more seriously you get taken when you’re not a cricket; when you don’t sound like you’ve been inhaling helium for hours every time you open your mouth, and when you don’t have to live in fear of wine glasses and jam jars.  I _like_ my life here.  I know it wasn’t real, before now, but I like what it is--and I don’t want to return.  Whatever... penance I have left to pay--I can pay it here.”  
  
A dull, wooden echo sounds through the hall and then August Booth stands, with the help of his father.  “That was the sound of the heels on my boots.  I’d really like it to not become the sound of my feet again, just because I told some girl at a pub a small fib about how attracted to her I am.  If that makes me an awful person, then so be it, but I _too_ don’t want to go back.  Much like Emma, I’ve spent almost my entire life here, knowingly, and that other place--it’s not home to me.  It’s just a place.  Home is family, and--”  
  
“I stay with my boy,” Geppetto says, so firmly that Regina feels it somewhere deep inside.  “If my boy wants to stay here, then that is what I want.  I owe him so much for the life I have made him live.  This is what is best for us.”  
  
Everyone turns back to Snow, who appears to be leaning rather more heavily against the table in front of her.   
  
“We...” she starts to say, but then seemingly catches Emma’s eye, and closes her own.  “We suspected that some of you would like to stay.  We will _not_ force you to join us; we no longer have the authority to do that.”  
  
“Staying’s not much of an option if it means we’re signing up to be prison guards, is it,” Granny points out, above the din of other people talking.  “Magic might be unpredictable but it’s still here.  Why should we be harboring these people?  Why should _our_ world be the unsafe one?”  
  
“Can’t they be dumped in a different portal?” Leroy asks, over the increased volume of people discussing their options amongst themselves.  
  
Snow swallows and then shakes her head.  “We have only one bean.  It’s the last one left.  Blue will ensure we go where we’re supposed to, but that’s it.  We have one shot.”  
  
Just like that, the gravity of the decision becomes clear, and what started as an optimistic conversation about returning to a home once thought lost forever is now turning bleak.  Ruby heads back to her seat, looking at Emma, who is staring ahead blankly; until Henry pulls on her sleeve and asks her a question, right up against her ear, at which point she just nods.  
  
Snow has a quiet conversation with Charming, and then just turns back to the crowd and says, “Ideally, this is a unanimous decision.  I’d like to see how close we are to it, so--if you could all just vote as to your preferences now--”  
  
“Not so fast, dearie,” a voice that feels like nails on chalkboard says, from the very back of the room.  It’s followed immediately by a quiet, “Rumpel, _don’t_ ”, but as ever, Belle only influences his behavior in _theory_.  The practice of it, she has very little control over.  
  
The hair on Snow’s arm rises almost visibly, and a muscle near her temple throbs visibly, but she says, “Rumpelstiltskin.  You have an alternative?”  
  
“Yes,” he says, getting to his feet with the help of his cane, and then stepping out into the aisle, right at the back of the room.  “There are _always_ alternatives that nobody seems to want to mention out loud, but as we’re playing with _democracy_ now, hm, why not allow people an honest vote between _all_ the choices that remain to them?”  
  
“State your cause, Rumpelstiltskin,” Charming demands, loud and short, as if he’s calling a sheep back to an enclosure.  
  
Rumpel laughs, and then swings his cane around briefly before lowering it to the ground again, midway up the aisle.  “How quickly  you all forget.”  He starts moving forward more quickly, now, and then walks right up to the table.  “I remember a time that in the grand scheme of things, in the _totality_ of all our actions, is not that very long ago at all!  And what was remarkable about that time, truly _remarkable,_ is how willing you all were to _kill_ those who stood in your way.”  
  
Someone near the back gasps--Regina assumes it’s Belle again, though it could be Princess Aurora, who always was weak of mind--and Snow’s face reddens abruptly.  
  
“We’re _not_ executioners.”  
  
“Well, _why not,_ dearie?  You’re keen enough to act as judge and jury; why not make your happy endings permanent, this time?  Just snuff out those lives that have been meddling with your family’s for _far_ too long now.  It won’t take many; just two little snips, as far as I can see.  Kill the queen; kill her mother, and live _happily ever after_.”  
  
Regina almost laughs, and then does actually smile when, at the front of the room, Rumpel looks directly at her and mouths _sorry_.  
  
“And what of you?”  Snow asks.  
  
“I’m no concern to any of you,” he says, sardonic lilt dropping from his voice as he turns to the crowd.  “You have my word.  My only purpose is to leave Storybrooke; I shall find a way to do it, and then you will never see me again.”  He tilts his head, as if listening to the ground, and then adds, “If you like, I’ll _gladly_ resolve our current... pirate problem before I go, but _tick tock,_ lovelies.”  He pauses, and then smiles broadly at the entire town.  “Two lives in exchange for _all_ happiness.  As far as deals go, and you might call me an expert.... I’d say it isn’t a bad one at all.”  
  
Two seconds later, all hell breaks loose, and all Regina can think of is Henry, blithely bearing witness to a decision on his mother’s likely execution.  She leans forward to catch Emma’s eye, but Emma appears to be on the same wavelength and has already pulled him up out of his seat.  
  
Regina can just about make out the hissed, “This is _not_ happening” that the sheriff directs at her mother, and then meets Henry’s eyes, in a flash.  
  
The fact that he might lose her has obviously never occurred to him, because that’s not how things work, in his mind and in his book.  Faced with the reality of the broken curse, she suddenly sees a panicky love in his eyes that she’d all but thought she’d imagined there, given how absent it has been of late.  
  
Then, Emma pulls him past the bickering crowd, and once again, she is all alone, an angry mob mounting an assault against her.

…

The vote is a shambles.  
  
Emma returns in time to cast her own ballot, and it takes Archie--the only trustworthy person in the room, when it comes down to it--about half an hour to count their lot.  He comes back and whispers the result in Snow’s ear, and she looks pained; her eyes close briefly, before she bangs the edge of her palm on the table’s surface, hard, and says, “We have a result.”  
  
“Is it unanimous?” Sleepy asks, yawning loudly.  
  
“No,” Snow says, and takes a deep breath. “Ninety eight percent in favor of leaving.  Two percent in favor of staying.”  
  
“And what of the prisoners?” Leroy demands.  
  
“Forty eight percent in favor of … executing,” Snow admits, after a moment.  
  
Her life dangles on two percent; votes perhaps not _cast_ , as opposed to votes cast in her favor.  She stretches her legs out, slowly, and then gets out of the chair and walks to the table, ignoring the unearthly silence behind her, as if she’s walking the plank into an abyss.  
  
“Regina, I--” Snow starts to say, but she silences her with a look that might as well be magic.  
  
“If this is to come to pass--I will be the one to tell _my son_ ,” she says, low enough for only Snow and Charming to be able to hear it.  
  
Snow stares at her blankly, and it’s Charming--always the supporting character, but sometimes with the key lines--who says, “You have my word.”  
  
Their word is something, at least, even if it’s not enough to keep her alive.  
  
Two percent, she thinks, turning around and facing the town.  With a tight smile, she curtsies to them and says, “ _Thank_ you for your honesty.”  
  
The shame that taints their faces follows her out into the hallway, where Emma and Henry are having a hushed conversation by the water fountain.  Emma is crouching down before him, her hands on his shoulders, and he--  
  
“Mom,” he says, breathily and red-eyed, before freeing himself from Emma’s gentle clasp.  He clutches her around the waist, without prompting, and clings.  He clings to her the way he used to, before the book entered their lives; like she’s all he has, all he needs, and like he can’t imagine a life without her.  
  
If this is to be the end of her, it’s one that she will treasure.  
  
Emma gets to her feet slowly and looks at her questioningly, and she shakes her head.  “Not today, Sheriff.”  
  
It earns her a terse nod, and then Emma says, “I can give you a ride home; we both can.”  
  
Henry’s grip remains tight, and Regina lets strands of his hair run through her fingers, slipping past the digits like sand or air.  So many things she’s tried to hold on to and ultimately lost, and even now, there is still more for her to lose.  
  
“Thank you,” she says, and then shakes her head.  “But that’s all right.  I have an errand to run.”  
  
The sheriff looks at her uncomprehendingly-- _groceries, now, really?_ her expression vaguely screams, but even if they happen to share a perspective, for now, they are not friends.   They will never _be_ friends, and she needs Emma Swan’s compassion about as much as she’s ever needed Snow’s pity.  
  
“Can I--see you, later?” Henry asks, and she looks down at him, momentarily forgetting about the many things in her life that are wrong, because he is not one of them.  
  
“Whenever you like, dear,” she tells him.  
  
It’s not a promise, because she might not be able to keep it; but it’s the first thing he’s asked of her in months now, and she will give him _anything_ she can.


	6. Chapter 6

It’s Kathryn who finds her.  
  
It shouldn’t surprise her, really.  Kathryn knew her in _this_ life, which had been a more honest life than the one she’d lived as queen.  Friendship over coffee requires a certain degree of mutual disclosure, and so Kathryn has always known about Daniel.  Not the details, but she’s known about everything that matters.  
  
Her steps in the grass are unhesitant, and Regina looks over her shoulder and says, “You don’t seem very concerned that I’ll hurt you.  Again.”  
  
Kathryn’s heels bend the grass, crush it, but somehow still manage to be gentle, as she comes to a halt next to Regina.  “Now that I know who you are, I think I know why you _did_ , and--”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, fingertips brushing past the top of the marker absently.  “It... I’m sure this is little comfort, but it truly wasn’t personal, Abigail.  I would’ve--”  
  
“Were we ever friends?” Kathryn cuts her off.  
  
The moment feels fragile, like they’re strung together in an invisible web of some kind but even the slightest twitch can have them flung apart.  Regina sees her own exhalations take form in the cold air, in and out, in and out, and then looks over at someone that she might have, far sooner in life, grown to care about deeply.  
  
“My role in this … drama... it didn’t really permit friendship,” she finally says.  
  
Kathryn tightens her scarf around her neck, and then buries her hands deep into her pockets; the coat she’s wearing looks large enough to be a man’s, somehow, but perhaps she just looks small because in this world, they all are.  
  
“I feel for you.  I did, before, without knowing _why_ , but even now--even knowing what horrible things you’ve done to all of us, and how I was nothing  more than a rook that you sacrificed so the knight couldn’t get to the queen--”  Kathryn shakes her head, and looks at the headstone and then glances up at Regina.  “I can only hope that I will _never_ feel as lonely as you must have been, to actually think that destroying all of us would bring you comfort.”  
  
Pity rankles her, but this is something different.  Something she truly doesn’t deserve, nor does she know how to respond to it at all.  The most she can do is look back honestly; let Kathryn see all of it, everything that’s left underneath all the disguises and make-up and lies.  
  
“I’ll talk to James,” Kathryn then finally says, before taking a step back.  “Whatever it is you have coming to you--we don’t gain anything from becoming _like_ you.”  
  
“No, you don’t,” Regina agrees, and lets her fingers slip off the headstone again.  “Nothing good lies down that path, dear.  I’m glad one of you is sensible enough to see it.”  
  
…  
  
As the days pass, and no one comes for her--except her son, twice, sitting in front of her at the dinner table and telling her, stiltedly, about the things he is learning, without ever mentioning who he is learning them from; she wonders where he learned kindness like _that_ , and then forbids herself from considering it further--she starts to wonder if this is what the sleeping curse she’s cast twice, now, is like.  
  
Time moves all around her--the way it had, outside of Storybrooke--but nothing inside of her changes at all.  
  
Her love for Daniel is a forever sore reminder that she cannot win; her love for Henry, an even more sore reminder that conceding defeat gets her no further.  Her hatred of Snow seems almost insignificant now, given how empty everything else is.    
  
She blow-dries her hair and irons her shirts and polishes the silver dessert forks, and considers if existing and living are even close to the same thing.  
  
Crosses in the fridge calendar tell her nothing except that every day is a stay, but sooner rather than later, that two percent will not be enough to save her.  All it’s going to take is--  
  
…  
  
Banging on her door, this time.    
  
It’s either Charming or his daughter, and she doesn’t bother doing much more than tying the sash in her robe shut, because what she looks like when they hang her isn’t what they’ll remember about her, anyway.  
  
Although, they may put her in stockades; God, they may _build_ stockades just to put her in.  
  
All that matters is that Henry doesn’t see any of it, and as it’s the middle of the night, she highly doubts that _he’s_ there.  He’s safe.  Whatever else he is--being indoctrinated by those hypocrites, she’s sure--he’s at least _safe_ with them.  They would all die for her son.    
  
There’s something so very rich about that notion.  Happy to lunge onto the tips of swords as all of the _Charmings_ are, it seems a less ridiculous exercise when they’re doing the lunging for _Henry_.  
  
“Is it time?” she asks, pulling the door open calmly.  
  
The sheriff _and_ her father both stare at her dumbly, like oxen distracted by a crack of lightning in the distance, and then Emma shakes her head violently.  “No, _no_.  Jesus, that’s not--you really think we’d just--”  
  
She stops, and her father just puts a hand on her shoulder and then looks at Regina gravely.  “We have a problem.”  
  
“Henry,” she says, immediately, but Charming shakes his head and says, “No.  No, he’s safe; Snow is with him, as is Red.”  
  
“Then I don’t see how _we_ have--”  
  
“Your mother broke her way out of jail,” Emma says, and it’s a good thing that she’s cringing as she says it, because if not for that admission of guilt, Regina thinks that she might have been forced  to surrender that pointless purple chip that Archie bestowed upon her a few weeks ago.  
  
Humans and their silly superstitions; as if a period of _inactivity_ can undo anything she’s already done.   
  
Even with Emma’s obvious guilt, the air around Regina’s fingertips crackles. “How could you be so--”  
  
“She strangled Hook,” Emma says, suddenly looking exhausted and far older than her years.  “They weren’t--I don’t know how she did it, but somehow she talked the evening shift into letting her go.  Dopey and Aurora don’t remember what happened at all; Mulan has a concussion.  I think Killian tried to stop her and she strangled him with his own belt.”  
  
“He’s _dead?_ ” Regina asks, because no matter what they think of her, life isn’t _ever_ trivial.  Not to her, and not to her mother.  Life is something to be handled deliberately, and to squash an ally like that...  
  
“We don’t know.  Whale is working on him, with assistance from Rumpel,” Charming says, running a hand over his head.  “We thought--she might have come here.  Seeing you was her sole reason for crossing over.”  
  
“No,” Regina says, and then looks at what she’s wearing; now that it’s clear they’ve not come to _kill_ her, she feels acutely naked and takes a step back into the house.  “She didn’t come _here_.  Not without a plan or something to hold over me, first.  The days of her just--”  
  
 _Wrapping her straps around me and tossing me about are through,_ she finishes, silently, running the ends of her fingers through her hair and then looking up sharply.  
  
“The evening shift; this Princess Aurora,” she says.  “Is she partial to Hook?  
  
“To the _pirate?_ ” Charming asks, looking surprised.  “Why would that matter?  He’s not the one who--”  
  
“Oh, no, no, no.  Oh, _shit_ ,” Emma mutters, and starts backing down the path.  “We have to _go_.  She doesn’t look like herself, David.  She did this to us before--and now she’s going to look like--”  
  
“Whoever will get her access,” Charming answers, and then looks stricken.  “So she’s _me_ , now?  Snow would never turn me away--”  
  
“No, she’s not you.  She’s never met you,” Regina says, and then looks past him at Emma.  “But she’s met your daughter.”


	7. Chapter 7

It’s incredibly undignified, to teleport across town in a skimpy _robe_ with half of her night-time facial mask still on, but what on earth is she supposed to do?  
  
The rules on how she reintegrates are fickle in this realm, and she ends up crashing into Mary Margaret Blanchard’s front door loud enough for the voices inside to stop talking.  When Ruby opens the door, with a surprised, “Madam Mayor--I mean, … your … Evil Queen--”, Regina cuts her off with a slightly-less-than-frantic, “Is Emma here?”  
  
“What?”  Ruby asks, looking her up and down, and she has to fight the urge to hit the girl.  
  
“Emma.  Is _Emma here_ ,” she barks out, more loudly now.  
  
The door gets pulled open further and Snow looks at her with endless mistrust.  “It’s the middle of the _night_.  What do you want with my daughter, Regina?”  
  
“Oh, _Gods,_ woman--that isn’t your _daughter_.  That’s--” Regina starts to say, but she’s too late.  Charming and Emma were too late.    
  
The sound of thickly-heeled boots, strutting across the wooden floor, is enough to make her nearly swallow her tongue; and when ‘Emma’ comes into view, with Henry sleepily rubbing his eyes right behind her, she feels a rush of panic so acute that it sets all of her senses alive.  
  
Her endless sleep is over, now, and instead, she’s thrown into her worst nightmare.  
  
“Hello, darling,” Emma says to her, which is when the penny drops; not so much for Ruby, who just looks baffled, but the way that Snow’s head cranes around and she then slowly starts to reach for the knife handle sticking out from her back pocket means that she knows.  
  
It’s good, that Snow knows, because Regina doesn’t have the faculties about her to _explain_.  The most she can manage is a near-frozen, “Get away from him.”  
  
“Mom?  What are you--”  
  
“Henry,” Snow says, so sharply that she’s never sounded _less_ like Henry’s favorite teacher or _more_ like a grandmother.  “Go upstairs.”  
  
Emma’s hand, the same hand that held Henry’s shoulder in the courtroom all those days ago, snakes around Henry’s back and then grabs hold of him, tightly enough for him to yelp.  Regina can barely recall why that hand had seemed threatening when it actually _belonged_ to Emma.  
  
Her heart burns, watching her son squirm against a woman who will destroy him just to prove that she still has some power.  
  
Cora, wearing Emma’s face, smiles almost prettily.  “I rather think not, darling Snow.  We’ve only just met, you see, and I’ve missed out on ten years of his life already.  Ten … formative years.  So much that he could’ve been learning, and that I highly doubt _you_ taught him, Regina.”  
  
Outside, someone hammers on a car horn, and it registers in some part of Regina’s brain, but all she can process is that arm wrapping around Henry and squeezing.    
  
“Let him go,” she says, more deliberately this time, as the air around her hands starts to shimmer with near-visible static.  
  
Her mother just looks amused, and then fakes hurt.  “But don’t you want young Henry to get to know his grandmother?  I have a lot to make up for; I’d say he deserves to be spoiled _rotten_ by me.”  
  
The way she says _rotten_ , all Regina can see is her mother’s fingers wrapping tight around whatever they can hold and pulverizing everything in her grasp, as if the whole world is hollow and decrepit and meaningless.  Those fingers are on Henry now, and as she opens her mouth to speak, her son cringes, and yelps, “You’re _hurting me_.”  
  
All the glass in the room shatters and explodes outwards, uncontrolled and unseen.  
  
Ruby covers her face and then ducks forward to cover Snow, who barely flinches as several splinters of a tumbler embed themselves in her arm; she merely uses the chaos to grip that knife in her back pocket without being seen, and the part of Regina that isn’t almost swooning with a sudden influx of wild, unbottled _rage_ , thinks _good_.  
  
 _That_ is a very, very small part, however, and the rest of her will take this house down with her if that’s what it takes.  
  
Cora smiles directly at her, and then, with a wave of her hand, is herself again.  
  
Her mother hasn’t aged, either; she hasn’t aged and she hasn’t changed, because she smiles almost pityingly and says, “ _Really,_ Regina, that kind of a lack of control is incredibly unbecoming of someone of your standing.”  
  
“ _Stop it,_ ” Henry demands, still struggling away from her, and when he looks over to the doorway, managing another squeaked-out, tight, _“Mom_ ”, she knows that someone is going to die tonight.  
  
It will not be _him_.  
  
She knows how to resolve this stand-off.  It’s a part of Rumpelstiltskin’s craft she’s never had to perfect, because why make something so intimate so _impersonal,_ but there are ways to play with hearts that Rumpelstiltskin only ever mentioned to her.  All that unlimited access requires, really, is a firm understanding of what makes the heart in question _beat_ , and with her mother, that’s never been in doubt.  
  
“My control is just fine,” she says, and closes her eyes for just a single beat of her own heart; it feels sick and achey.  “Give me back my son, and we can talk about just how many things I’ve learned since you last saw me, _Mother_.”  
  
Cora laughs, softly, and then tuts a little.  “Oh, darling.  I know all about the ways you have tried to ruin everything good I _ever_ gave you.  In fact, I’d say the entire world does.  The queen who had it all but threw it all away, because she lost her _one true love_.”  
  
The mockery, the belittling of everything that she’s ever wanted, is familiar and yet seems like a distant dream all at once.  It takes Regina a full five seconds to realize that her mother is that voice in her head that she’s never been able to escape; all the mirrored banishments in the world cannot actually make her be _gone_.  
  
“Nothing you have ever given me was worth keeping,” she says, feeling her eyes begin to sting; it could be sweat, it could be blood, and it could be tears.  It could be _anything,_ but her vision darkens with it and she gnaws down on the inside of her cheek as her son sucks in a deep breath and then yanks on his grandmother’s arm.  It doesn’t budge.  “And the only things I’ve ever had that _were_ , I lost because of you.”  
  
“Still blaming me for your failings, I see,” Cora says, with lessened patience now.  “It’s so very childish of you, Regina.  All I’ve ever wanted for you was the _very_ best, and your struggles against those desires--you have _reaped_ what you have sown, darling.  No more, no less.  But it isn’t too late.”  
  
“I beg your pardon?” she asks, the words drilling out of her mouth.  Snow shoots her a worried look and switches her hold on the knife, and Regina thinks, _yes, do it; do it to one of us, but make sure he’s not in the middle._  
  
Snow never did have what it takes, though, and just murmurs something inaudible in Red’s ear; the wolf-girl nods, and Regina knows, without having to ask, that her son’s safety has just been secured.  
  
It sets her free, in a strange way.  
  
“I have always been willing to teach you everything I know,” Cora says, shifting her grip on Henry until she can stroke his hair.  He shudders away from the gesture, and Regina feels her stomach bottom out; knows exactly what he’s experiencing, right now, except he has never _wanted_ the poisonous affection he’s being offered.  
  
His version of evil has been _so_ underdeveloped, all this time; it’s the one thing she’s managed to shield him from, but after tonight, he’ll know.  
  
“But you’ve never been willing to learn.  One would _think_ that with your currently limited options--with what they’ve made you _become_ , a powerless spinster without even a _son_ to raise, that your perspective has finally opened up enough to see what I am offering you as a _gift_.”  
  
Henry’s reddened cheeks start to shine, and it’s the sight of his tears that dries her mouth out completely and makes her look at her mother with a sense of determination that she isn’t sure she’s ever had before; not for more than a second.  
  
“I will _never_ want what you’re offering,” she says, evenly.  “Surrender him now, and I’ll consider letting you live.”  
  
Cora laughs, but tightens her hold on Henry once more.  “Never is a _such_ big word, darling.  Be sure that you know what you’re--”  
  
Her mother chokes, a little bubble of spit bursting on her lip right as Regina grips and squeezes.  Henry stumbles to the ground when the arm around his back falls away, and Regina closes her eyes and pushes a little more; just a _little_.  It feels good in ways that she cannot articulate, foreign and dark and lusciously powerful, and she knows that this is it; that she’s _done_.  This will not be something else that she will fail to bring to a close; she will--  
  
“Mom?” Henry’s voice sounds, tinny, and very far away.  
  
It distracts her just long enough for her concentration to shatter, and the invisible heart-strings holding her mother up snip neatly in two.  Cora sinks to the ground, swooning forward and then dropping all at once, her forehead impacting dully with the wooden floor.  
  
It’s not the roaring climax she was building up towards, but it’s over all the same.  
  
“Are you all right?” Regina asks; the frantic gallop of two pairs of boots coming up the stairs behind her makes her take a few steps forward, into a house she’s never wanted to be in, but none of that matters when-- “Henry, you’re _bleeding_.  Don’t move--let me have a look--”  
  
He permits her fussing.  They _all_ permit her fussing, next to her mother’s lifeless form--and no, she cannot bring herself to check just what she has or hasn’t done; not until the muted shock in Henry’s eyes turns to horror at the unmoving body on the floor next to him.  Emma catches the movement of his eyes and leans down, checking for a pulse with two steady fingers.  
  
“She’s alive.  Out cold, but alive,” Emma tells them, as Regina runs her thumb along Henry’s forehead and then lets her hands fall away.  
  
He looks at her for a long few seconds, and then wraps his arms around her neck.  “You saved me,” he mumbles against her neck; it’s the briefest of gestures, but for once, the year-old envy she’s felt pressurizing inside of her every time he’s called Emma Swan his _hero_ is completely absent.  
  
What she’s left with is... a feeling so small and pure that she can barely take it.  
  
“I--” she starts, and wonders what comes next; asking his forgiveness, for the fact that she used magic, or watching as he’s whisked away by one of the others who care for him now, while she’ll be made to explain what her mother wanted.  
  
Snow and Charming talk to Ruby, quietly, and Emma gets to her feet again, glass crushing with every step she takes towards the sink, and then returns with a glass of water.  Regina leans back to let her give it to Henry, and then stops when it’s handed to her instead.  
  
“You’re a little pale,” Emma says, which sounds like it must be an understatement; and only when she thinks about what she _might_ look like does she realize that she’s on her knees in a pile of shattered glass, little cuts forming everywhere, and her nose is probably starting to trickle with dark red blood.  
  
Magic migraines, Rumpel had called them.  She’d suffered them worse than any of his pupils, but then she’d also pushed herself harder.  Always.   _You do try so very hard,_ he’d tell her, when she’d be smearing the blood off her upper lip and staring at her _near_ successes.  
  
Henry presses his pyjama sleeve to her nose and says, “I think you’re supposed to tilt your head back.  Right?”  
  
It’s Snow who says _no_ , and for one moment, cleanly laundered Superman sleeve tight up against her mouth and Henry’s eyes serious and trusting, she thinks that this is what her life was meant to look like.  This is what she lost, in trying so very hard to gain something _like_ it.  
  
“My other grandma seems... pretty scary,” Henry says, tentatively, after a few more seconds of silently studying her.  
  
Her laughter surprises nobody more than it does her.


	8. Chapter 8

Chaos and blood and awful reminders of the woman who started her on this path notwithstanding, it’s a rather nice night.  
  
Nice nights, of course, are always followed by the harsh light of day--and day is characterized by six of the seven dwarves congregating outside of Snow’s house, demanding _justice_ for what’s happened.  
  
“We don’t want to be stuck with your kind in _any_ world, sister,” Grumpy tells her, before smiling viciously--as sharp as the axe he’s taken up once more, in the hopes of digging for fairy dust.  “You might’ve stopped the trouble for once, but what’s _once_ in comparison to all the times when you were the one who brought it right to us?”  
  
His brethren mumble in gentle agreement, and if not for the fact that she’s in one of Charming’s long military coats and Emma is next to her, that badge gleaming in the early dawn light, these six dwarves might have been the ones to take care of the problem, right there and then.  
  
“Okay, seriously, _stop it_ , all of you.  Killing Regina won’t solve anything.  It’ll just put blood on your hands,” Emma says, sounding exhausted, and Regina looks over sharply; wants to ask how _many_ times in the last few weeks she’s had to say those exact words, for them to sound so rote.  
  
“Yeah?  And what will keeping her alive accomplish?” Doc demands, pushing his glasses up his nose tremulously.  
  
Emma takes a deep breath and then just pushes past them, clearing a path for Regina to walk through.  If she had more energy, and fewer promises to keep, she’d topple them all like dominoes with merely a thought--but how many men can she knock over until one of them finally breaks through?  
  
“The town grows restless,” she tells Emma, settled in the passenger seat of the police cruiser.  “If your mother insists on waiting for a single opinion to form for much longer, she’ll have bodies on her hands.”  
  
Emma glances at her briefly and then says, “People might be getting restless, but they’re not _violent_.  We’re talking--florists and greengrocers and chemists and shoe salesmen here, Regina.”  
  
“Kings and executioners and angry dwarves and the Black Death, you mean.”  
  
There is something so worrying about the frustration in Emma, who has always been a little hair-trigger with her _actions,_ but never so easily riled; her fingers curl tight around the steering wheel now, though, and she pointedly asks, “So what do you suggest we do?  Give them what they want, in stages, to calm them down?  Maybe just chop off a finger for now and hope they change their minds?”  
  
“Open up the portal, and give them a _choice_ ,” Regina says, before closing her eyes and letting her head sink back against the headrest.  “Those who truly want to _go_ will go.  Those who want revenge, or have nothing to return to will stay.  Divide and conquer, Miss Swan.  It’s hardly a _new_ strategy.”  
  
Emma sighs deeply, but doesn’t say anything else, and pulls up to the house silently.  
  
“What would she have done to Henry, if you hadn’t--” she then starts to ask; Regina opens an eye and watches as her lips rub together, like she’s dying to ask more but can’t bring herself to do it.  
  
“You don’t want to know,” she says, after a moment.  
  
Emma nods, and then rubs at her eyes and says, “I’m going to make sure someone patrols by your place from now on.  Every four hours or so.”  
  
“Surely you won’t let her escape _again_.  Her Royal Highness Princess Gullible must be relieved of duty, no?”  
  
Emma cracks a small smile, but then looks at her seriously.  “It’s not _her_ I’m worried about, once word gets out that your _mother_ escaped and hurt a number of people before she was captured again.”  
  
“Your concern is moving, Sheriff, but I can handle whatever the citizens of this town throw at me.”  
  
Emma opens her mouth, but then seems to change her mind and just leans forward and fiddles with the car radio for a second.  “Get some rest.  You look like hell.”  
  
How nice it must be, to have no idea what hell actually looks like, Regina thinks, as she throws the car door open and lets the cold envelop her all over again.  
  
…  
  
The cuts on her knees have fully healed by the time word reaches her that the balance is shifting.  
  
Archie Hopper stands on her doorstep, shifting from foot to foot and fiddling with the leg on his glasses, which he’s rubbing with the end of his shirt before putting them back on.  
  
“Mulan and Emma have been working non-stop on keeping the population under control.  A fight broke out at The Rabbit Hole two nights ago because a cousin of Prince Philip’s--”  
  
“Who?” Regina asks, with a frown.  
  
“Sleeping Beauty’s true love,” he clarifies, with a small smile.  “He’s--he hasn’t made it over here, but anyway, his cousin took offense at Harold Hamhock declaring that the escape was all Aurora's fault and she has no business being near prisoners; and unfortunately the party to break up their bickering was Red, who of course should really know better than to try to tell any of the Brothers Hamhock what to do because... well...”  
  
“Lycantrophobia,” Regina suggests.  
  
He opens his mouth, closes it,  and then tilts his head.  “I don’t think that’s actually a word, but it should be.”  
  
A debate for a different time.  “How many wounded?”  
  
“Victor Frankenstein was one of the men caught in the crossfire, so Granny has been stitching everyone up, and then Albert Spencer--”  
  
She groans, despite herself.  “King _George_ was there?”  
  
“He decided to use it as a campaign opportunity to state that the real blame neither lies with Aurora nor with Cora, but of course with the de facto leadership, as his son is irresponsible and should be working to put down these threats to the very fabric of our existence.”  
  
Regina raises an eyebrow and watches as Archie shivers, leaning against the faded paintwork and pressing his lips together into a wry grimace.  
  
“When Red defended James, as she does, he said she was lucky to not be on the cut-off list herself, given that her little _condition_ has cost more lives than the Ogre Wars.  That’s when her grandmother decked him, of course, but by that point, a small mob had already banded together to go to the prison.”  
  
“And--”  
  
“And Mulan and Emma managed to stop them, in time, but--”  
  
“Is anyone in town _not_ currently hospitalized?” she asks, because it’s unbelievable just how _poorly_ the entire situation is being managed.  Not that anyone is asking for her opinion; she helped take out the garbage, and they’ve left her standing next to the heap.   _To be continued_ , as the cartoons Henry loves watching declare at the end of every episode.  
  
He raises his hand sheepishly.  “But--I have my own problems, which is why I’m really here.  Not that--I don’t think you should be kept in the loop; but...”  
  
She assesses him quietly for a few moments, and then steps back, opening the door further.  “Very well.  Come on in, Archie.”  
  
He smiles, quickly, and then scratches at the side of his head and says, “Yes, I’ve been meaning to ask about that--I get why my surname is _Hopper_ , but why _Archibald_?  What’s wrong with _John?_ ”  
  
She manages a smile of her own, mostly sincerely.  “Let me make us some coffee; and then I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”  
  
…  
  
He puts the book of baby names to the side and then looks at her with a faint kind of admiration; it’s tainted with legitimate fear, but then he seems to swallow that down and just accepts the mug she gives him.  
  
“I don’t think I ever stopped to think about that; how much you must’ve--well, _imagined,_ to make any of this work.”  
  
“It’s a largely subconscious process,” she admits, but then shrugs.  “But--this was our home.  I saw no reason not to make it flourish, given that we would have at the very least twenty-eight years to enjoy it.”  
  
He nods, and doesn’t look at her like he’s expecting a grand confession of remorse, which is at least part of why she invited him in.  
  
“I’m telling you this in confidence,” he then says, pushing his glasses up again.  “I trust that you’ll keep a secret; you’re obviously very skilled at it, but--I’m going out on a limb here and it’s you or Mr. Gold, and I... _really_ don’t trust him to not use this against me.”  
  
“Use what?” she asks, and then as he continues to look at her with a small frown, adds, “You’ll note that aside from my _son_ , I don’t have much in the way of an audience anymore, dear.  Whatever you tell me will not leave these four walls.”  
  
Archie nods and blows on his coffee slowly, and then puts the mug down without taking a sip, wringing his hands together.  “They’ve--the portal’s already open.”  
  
“Excuse me?” she says.  
  
“They opened it up after--your mother.  After she escaped.  It was Emma’s idea; she said she wanted the option to evacuate people if anything _else_ went wrong, so they’ve opened up the portal and are now just waiting for the right time to announce that it's in service. Currently, the news is likely to spark more unrest; we need to find a way to strike a compromise on the captives.”  
  
Regina digs her teeth into the inside of her bottom lip, and then taps her nails against the side of the mug, like the ticking of a clock that’s nearing midnight.  “The portal’s open.”  
  
“Blue is helping them keep it stable, with the small quantity of fairy dust we've mined.  It’s in David Nolan’s back yard.  Abby and Fred are watching it for now; I think Sean is helping them, and...”  
  
He flinches, before fishing around his pockets for a handkerchief that he uses to mop his forehead briefly.  
  
“And what, Dr. Hopper?”  
  
“And,” Archie says, “I don’t know how to tell them this, but I think keeping the portal open is having some-- _unintended side effects that don't spell out anything good_.”  
  
Regina stills and watches as he covers his mouth, swallowing compulsively as if that will make his voice drop back down to its _human_ register, and then he just gives up and looks at her helplessly.  
  
“You’re reverting,” she says, carefully.  
  
“ _Not completely_ ,” he squeaks, and then clears his throat a few times.  “Sorry.  Not completely, but that’s been happening for the last week, mostly when I get... excited, or scared.”  
  
Regina takes a sip of her own coffee and then looks at him again.  “Have you told anyone else?”  
  
He shakes his head.  “Not only is it _embarrassing_ , but it’s not the kind of problem that a well-aimed arrow or a decent parry and thrust will take care of. I need--”  
  
“Magic,” Regina says, and sighs.  “Yes.  I can’t say I disagree.”  
  
“What do you think this means?” Archie asks her, after a few moments of silence.  “Because this is just a theory, but I think in opening up the portal--”  
  
“It has destabilized this reality.  There is--it’s not tangible, but imagine it like...”  She hesitates, and then looks at him curiously.  “Have you ever read the _Harry Potter_ books?”  
  
“I’m--I’m sorry, what?” Archie says, before frowning at her lightly.  “The children’s books, you mean?”  
  
“They’re utter nonsense; pure tripe about how everyone can pick up a stick and suddenly teacups go flying--”  
  
“Ah, the Disney model,” he says, with a self-effacing smile.  “I see.”  
  
“All the same, there is an interesting segment near the end of the fifth one... Henry isn’t quite old enough to read it yet because--”  And she laughs, at herself, and then shakes her head.  “Well, I suppose he can handle it now that he knows.  Anyway, the book discusses a door or a window, I forget, and if you fall through it you are gone from one world and into another, without a way to cross back.  All that separates this world from the other is a veil.”  
  
“Like a curtain.”  
  
“Hm, yes.  Light and flimsy.  Now, the reality of portal jumping is a little less clean than that, but good jumpers know how to lift the veil and seal it off again in a second.  The Hatter’s hat, for instance; once the jumpers are through, it seals itself off.  Two in, two out.”  
  
“So what happens when--the portals don’t seal themselves off?”  
  
She takes a careful sip of her coffee and says, “I imagine that keeping one open is like--inviting a breeze to flutter against the veil.”  
  
“Meaning little bits of the forest are leaking through,” Archie says, before slumping back into the chair.  “Does that mean we’re going to lose this world regardless?  Because if so, Snow and Charming should _know_ \--it means nobody can stay behind.”  
  
“Except the prisoners,” Regina says, with a thin smile.  
  
Archie directs a stern look at her and then says, “ _Nobody_ can stay behind, Regina.”  
  
She tries not to roll her eyes, and manages for the most part; his kindness is one of very few types that she finds she just cannot bring herself to resent.  “I appreciate the sentiment, but it isn’t necessary.”  
  
“What do you mean?” he asks, his eyes widening.  
  
“Nothing dramatic, dear,” she says, and then wonders if she even still has it in her to tell lies that aren’t as black as the coffee she’s currently drinking.   She takes a barely noticeable breath and then smiles at him.  “ This is not a world that accepts magic; it cannot … for lack of a better metaphor, _digest_ it.  What Rumpelstiltskin did in bringing it over here was inorganic, and hence _diluted_ , unpredictable.  Anything that seeps in here from another realm on accident will simply evaporate once the portal closes.”  
  
“And until then--”  
  
She shrugs lightly.  “Until then, you may wake up tomorrow and be a cricket; and you close your eyes for ten minutes and find you are a man again.  It’s very hard to say; all I can be certain of is that it won’t last.  Not without a curse to bind it.”  
  
He looks relieved enough, nodding gently to himself, and then says, “Well--I haven’t missed being a cricket, but at least it’s a relatively harmless transition.”  
  
As soon as he says it, she thinks of who _else_ this might be happening to, and then nearly knocks her mug off the table in her haste to get to her feet.


	9. Chapter 9

“I didn’t realize you cared about Red,” Archie asks her, hurrying after her to the Mercedes.  
  
“I care about what happens to _anyone_ with unrestricted access to _my son_ ,” she snaps at him, and then rolls her eyes and adds, “And, of course, it would be _terrible_ if anyone else got hurt...”  
  
He smiles at her as he settles into the passenger seat.  “You know, no matter how hard you try to convince me that there isn’t anything good left of you, I think there’s a part of you that cares about all of us and always has.”  
  
“A queen needs her subjects,” she tells him, peeling out of the driveway, and then gunning the car forward towards Snow’s apartment.  “I wouldn’t waste my time trying to read anything more into it than that.”  
  
“Hmm,” he says, gripping the sides of his seat tightly as she ignores a stop sign and squeezes the car through a very tight turn.  “I think--you can slow down a little.  It’s not a full moon, Regina; it’s … three pm.”  
  
“That would be very helpful if this was the Enchanted Forest, and if we could be _sure_ that her transformation will follow all the usual rules,” Regina says, braking abruptly in front of a crosswalk with three waddling ducks on it, and then flooring the pedal again.  
  
As Archie grows paler and paler, next to her, she briefly considers that things truly are getting desperate in what remains of the township she painstakingly built over the years.  Had she still been in charge, a cruiser would be signalling for her to pull over by now; by her own count, she’s violated at least seven different provisions in Title 29.  
  
Then, she laughs at herself, shortly; as if Emma Swan and her unlicensed, unelected, otherworldly deputy Mulan even know what Title 29 _is._  
  
…  
  
The Sheriff’s Department is now more akin to a refugee center than the quiet, municipal traffic ticket writing station it had been until Emma Swan had wandered into town, unwillingly knocking over everything that held their lives together.  
  
Archie leads the way inside, almost shielding her, and in a bizarre way she feels as if she’s accidentally stumbled upon a royal retreat.  Ella is manning the phones, cupping baby Alexandra in one arm and scribbling down messages in another.  Charming and Thomas, looking as if they are brothers, are pointing at various points on the town map and pinning down firetruck-red thumbtacks on them; hot spots, or markers for patrol, it’s hard to say.    
  
Jasmine and Al are engaged in what appears to be an interview with Goldilocks-- _Hannah,_ she reminds herself; _Hannah_ and the bears are little Joseph, Michelle and Ben--who seems frantic and then blurts out, “He’s been a _boy_ for most of his life, he doesn’t know the first thing about _foraging,_ what if he gets caught in a trap, Jas?”  
  
Archie looks over his shoulder at her, worry painting his normally friendly features, and that’s when Regina spots Emma, unwinding a hose from the hallway and running it into her office.  
  
They make their way over slowly, past a few members of The Pride who are looking distinctly hairier than they did a few days ago.  One of them licks his lips slowly, tongue almost lolling out, and she looks back at him coolly; the one with the nose piercing and the spiked-up blue hair just looks like he’s going _deranged_ rather than dim, the way he’s been for twenty eight years now.  Scar, replete with pierced ears and that jagged line running across his face, donned in black leather and thick armbands, is leaning up against Hook’s cell, talking to him about something that has them both looking grim.  
  
“ _Hurry_ ,” sounds from inside of Emma’s office, and Regina nudges Archie onward.  When they reach the threshold, they both stop short, legitimately too stunned to do anything.  
  
Eric, his white shirt-sleeves rolled up to his elbows, is cradling his wife the best he can, but scales are slippery and it has been a _long_ time since Ariel couldn’t walk on the legs that the curse had given her.  The girl’s teeth are chattering and her lips are turning blue.    
  
“P-p-please,” Ariel manages, before Emma shouts, “ _Now_ , Mulan” and hoses the little mermaid down with enough force for the splash to also soak through the majority of her own clothes, not to mention Regina’s suit and Archie’s sweater and pants.  
  
Ariel regains some color, her cheeks pinking, as the water runs down her body and then curls weakly towards Eric’s neck.  He looks frantic, first at Emma and then at Regina, and says, “What is _happening_?  What is causing this?”  
  
Emma reaches for her gun, seemingly unconsciously, and then shakes her head.  “I have no idea.  It’s not _you_ , is it?”  
  
Regina holds up her hands and turns them all ways before saying, “Obviously not.  Have you tried the pawn shop?”  
  
“Do you need help?” Archie asks.  “We can take her somewhere--I know the lake is gone, but--”  
  
“Yes, it is,” Eric says, running a soaking wet hand across his face, hair drooping into his eyes.  “We were just walking down the _street_ when she--her legs just... this was the nearest location I could carry her to, but she needs at least a bathtub.”  
  
“What about the public pool?” Archie suggests, and the horror in Eric’s eyes clears, briefly.  
  
“Yes.  That’s--”  
  
Ariel moans weakly, already starting to tremble again, and Emma lets a trickle of water continue running down her body for a few seconds.  The sight of the tail, scales and fins and all, coming out from under the kind of short tennis skirt that Melody Fisher had favored while living in Storybrooke, is a near hysterical thing.  For a few seconds, all Regina can do is stare at it, and then she remembers that they’re here for far more urgent reasons.  
  
“Sheriff--a word,” she says, and Emma looks at her sharply, as if there can’t possibly be anything more important than this.  “ _Now_ ,” she adds, for emphasis.  
  
For only the second time in all the months they’ve known each other, Emma follows her lead, staying silent until they’re in the hallway.  “Look--whatever it is, if it’s not about Henry or life-threatening, can it please wait?  I’m a little overwhelmed here and the patrols are due back in soon--”  
  
“Where is Red?” Regina asks, because this isn’t the time to listen to a diatribe about work pressures.  “Do you have her patrolling?”  
  
“Yeah, we need her … nose.  We’re looking for Albert Spencer; he’s ducked under after.... well, uh, we kind of had a situation last week--”  
  
“Yes, dear, I’m familiar,” Regina says, before stepping close enough to the Sheriff for the water droplets on her eyelashes to be clearly visible.  “Let me spell out the nature of your current problems to you, in words even _you_ can understand.  Archie is starting to sound like a pipsqueak.  The hyenas, not to mention the leader of their motley pack, are all growing _excessive_ facial hair.  If you were to ask Al, I’m sure he would tell you that Abu has been scratching at his sides quite a lot lately--and a girl who was given legs in defeat of the witch who cursed her _thirty_ years ago is suddenly flopping helplessly in your office.  What does this suggest to you?”  
  
“That there is some _really_ weird shit going on, even by Storybrooke standards,” Emma says, after a second.  
  
Regina feels the anger swell and says, “If _everyone is reverting back to fairytale form,_ Miss Swan, what does that suggest is happening to _Ruby Lucas_ right now?”  
  
Mulan pokes her head out of the kitchenette to the side of the hallway and says, “Which one is Ruby Lucas, sir?”  
  
“Red cape.  Likes carrying baskets and, oh, _yes_.   _Eating_ people,” Regina says, before reaching for Emma’s arm and gripping her tightly.  “ _Where is she?_ Is she anywhere near Henry?”  
  
“She and Mary Margaret are--” Emma starts to say, before blanching.  “Oh my God.  Regina, we have to get to her.  Mulan--can you--”  
  
“Yes.  I’ll hold the line here; let me know if you need anything else from me, sir,” Mulan says, dropping the end of the hose with a quick salute, before striding back to the departmental office, where she claps her hands together loudly and starts issuing orders.    
  
“She’s impressive,” Regina says, as Archie and Eric carry a now-unconscious Ariel to the hallway.  
  
“Yes, she is,” Emma agrees, running a hand through her hair.  “Okay--I had Ruby try tracking out by the school today, and with the regular patrol that means she’s going to be--okay.  Yeah, got it.”  
  
“I know you two are in a hurry, but can you drop us off at the pool first?” Archie asks, followed by a muted, “Please” from Eric.  
  
“We don’t have time,” Regina says, curtly.  
  
Emma looks like she wants to throw a punch, but just says, “We’ll _make_ time.  I’ll call Mary Margaret and see where they are--if we can warn them, they should be able to contain this.”  
  
Regina looks at the mermaid and her husband--friends, in Storybrooke, even if they hadn’t known about how deeply their love ran--and digs her keys out of her pocket and throws them to Emma.  “I’m illegally parked on the curb.”  
  
“I’ll be sure to write you a ticket if we don’t all get eaten in the next half hour,” is Emma’s muttered, unwitty response.  
  
…  
  
“They’re in the camp of people who don’t want to leave,” Emma says, as soon as Archie slams the back door shut.  “Eric and Ariel, I mean.  I can’t blame them, after today.”  
  
“I thought that vote was confidential,” Regina says, before sighing and saying, “Give me the phone, what you are currently doing is so unsafe that we won’t even make it _to_ the school alive.”  
  
Emma looks disgruntled but passes over her iPhone, and Regina presses it to her cheek and hears it ring; once, twice, …  
  
"She forgets hers.  A lot.  Mary Margaret did, I mean,” Emma says, when they’re on the fourth ring and coasting down past the hospital.  
  
“Even as a girl, your mother usually did what she wanted to do without considering how it might affect others,” Regina says, neutrally enough, before ending the call.  “She’s also notoriously difficult to kill, however, so I’m sure she’ll be fine.  It’s everyone _else_ in town I’m--”  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Emma says, cutting her off.  
  
They have nothing to do but stare out the window, looking for curly black hair and black leggings--as far as Emma had been able to recall--with a red windbreaker on top.  The cape would’ve been helpful for identifying her, at least, but as long as she’s out in public, they’ll manage either way.  
  
“It’s the portal, isn’t it,” Emma says, taking a sharp right on Windsor and peering into the distance.  “That’s what’s causing this.”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says.  “Not your finest moment, Sheriff; playing with powerful magical items that you don’t understand.”  
  
“We opened it up because _you_ suggested people should start leaving.  I figured that they’d come around to the idea, but Mary Margaret and David don’t want to leave until they’re sure that nobody’s going to get killed, so--”  
  
It’s unsurprising, that that’s the underpinning thought here, and Regina sighs softly.  
  
“How bad is this going to get?” Emma asks, like she both needs to and absolutely doesn’t want to know.  
  
“Truthfully?  They’re all going to revert, permanently, sooner rather than later.”    
  
The car swerves wildly, and Emma looks at her in vague panic.  “Like-- _revert_ revert?  So Billy’s going to be a mouse again and August--”  
  
Regina nods, sucking her cheeks in.  “It might be in our best interest to keep this to ourselves for now, but opening up that portal and keeping it open--whatever _limits_ there were to magic in this realm before, they’re gone now.”  
  
Emma hits the brakes a little abruptly and Regina reaches over to steady the steering wheel.  
  
“So you can--”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, calmly; as she turns her hand over, a small lick of fire alights in her palm, until she closes her fist and snuffs it out.  
  
“And your mother--”  
  
“Hard to say.  Her magic has never been like mine.  I learned how to use it the ... hard way, shall we say.  She’s mastered the cliff’s notes version.  I’m sure that the asylum will hold her for now.  It’s those who cannot control their magic you need to worry about.”  
  
“But _Rumpelstiltskin_ \--” Emma starts again.  
  
Regina smiles faintly.  “He’s had his powers back all along, dear.  Surely you knew that?  Or did your father not explain the extent of his bargaining for peace in your absence to you?”  
  
To her amusement, Emma stops in front of a red light-- _how law-abiding of you_ , Regina thinks and almost says--and then smacks the flats of her hand against the steering wheel, impotent frustration boiling over.  “ _Goddammit_ , why didn’t you tell me that this would happen if we opened up the portal?”  
  
“I said that moving people out _fast_ would resolve the difficulties in this world.  I never suggested that opening up the portal for an extended amount of time would be a good idea, and _Blue_ should have told you this when you talked to her about the bean.”  Regina scoffs, after a second, as the car moves forward again.  “Though, of course, the more violent this world gets, the more likely it is that the villains will all be hung for the sake of _peace_.  I can’t imagine she would find fault with that outcome.”  
  
Emma pulls into the school’s parking lot and lets the car roll forward, before looking at Regina in confusion.  “I thought she was a _good_ fairy godmother.”  
  
“Yes.  And you thought I wanted your mother dead because she’s _prettier_ than I am.”  She waits for the car to come to a stop, and then looks at Emma almost curiously, hand on the handle.  “What will it actually _take_ for you to realize that nothing about our lives is _completely_ as it seems, Sheriff?”  
  
Before Emma can answer, something inside of the school building _howls_.


	10. Chapter 10

It doesn’t occur to her to teleport until she’s already running after the sheriff, whose long strides--unimpeded by heels--have her coasting down the hallway and only pausing long enough to aim her gun into the various classrooms.  
  
School has been out, recently, but the children need something to do and according to Henry, Belle French has volunteered to set up a reading circle of some kind--which means that on top of the children, they have a helpless bystander to protect here.  
  
“Prioritize Belle,” she calls out to Emma, who looks at her over her shoulder.  
  
“I’m _prioritizing_ the children, Regina--Jesus Christ,” she says, leaning against the wall briefly and then shoving another classroom door open.  Her gun waves back and forth and then she mutters, “ _Clear_ ”, like they’re a two-person S.W.A.T. team.  
  
Regina pulls on her shoulder and spins her around, staring her down.  “If something were to happen to _Belle,_ Rumpelstiltskin will kill us all.  Do you _understand_?”  
  
The panic that flashes across Emma’s face is familiar; it’s the same look Regina herself had sported constantly shortly after getting Henry, when everything had seemed overwhelming.  The girl isn’t ready to be the ruler that this town needs her to be, and for one second Regina thinks she may need to slap her into action, but then she just closes her eyes and says, “Mary Margaret can take care of herself, even if she _is_ \--”  
  
Neither of them want to be thinking of that--at _all_ \--and so Regina nods.  
  
They start moving again, and then the screaming starts.  Children, crying out; Regina immediately thinks of Henry, but he’s not here today.  He’s--she can’t remember.  The frantic, high-pitched, _young_ voices crying out from down the hall-- _the gym, of course_ \--are like nails scratching down the sides of her mind.    
  
“Do you do any defensive magic or are you just into killing people?” Emma asks, face pulled taut like she’s trying not to start screaming herself.  
  
The doors to the gym burst open and out come the first kids, before Regina can respond.  
  
“Go, go, go--” Belle is calling out behind them, shielding them with her own form.  A flash of brown streaks by in the background, and Emma yells, “Come _on_ , we have to--”  
  
“ _NO!”_ sounds from inside of the gym, loud enough for Belle to freeze, hands still on the shoulders of children; and then she just collapses to her knees.  
  
It triggers a reaction in Emma, who--as opposed to joining the defeat--seems to grind her teeth for a second and then starts sprinting forward.  One of Regina’s heels breaks purely from impact, and she kicks the other one off before running as well.  
  
What they see inside, Emma snapping, “Get to safety” to Belle in passing, cannot be unseen.  
  
Snow is bodily guarding three children, but there is one--  
  
Emma produces a noise that sounds like a click in her throat, her hands coming up shakily to aim the gun at the wolf; the wolf that’s currently spitting out parts of a dress and then diving forward for more.  
  
“Emma, oh my God, get _out_ of here,” Snow yells.  “There isn’t anything we can do--”  
  
“Yeah, to hell with that,” Emma calls back, before looking back and forth between the wolf and Regina.  “Where do I aim?  The _heart_ right?  Where is it?  Where--”  
  
“If you can provide a diversion, I can resolve this without any further casualties,” Regina says, looking at her until she gets a little more clarity and a little less panic in response.  
  
“Are you sure?”  Emma checks.  
  
“Consider yourself Plan B, Sheriff,” Regina says, and then points towards the opposite side of the gym.  “Head over there; shoot something.  It’ll come for you--”  
  
“Yeah, okay, got it,” Emma says, before whistling sharply and then waving at the wolf, which cranes its head up in a slow surprise, teeth glistening with--  
  
Regina closes her eyes and wonders if the portal has done enough; if this is actually going to work.  If not, they’ll all die here today and it’ll be an ending of another kind.  She’s been close, close to giving in, so many times in the last few weeks that in her mind, her final moments have already been written--it’s just a question of what last actions define her.  
  
Henry would be proud of this one, she thinks, even as her arms start to shake and the windows on the sides of the gym suddenly darken.  The wolf is prowling towards Emma, who is sort of dancing away from it towards the basketball hoop at the far end of the gym.  Children are crying; Belle is somewhere behind her, telling them to call their parents, to wait outside, promising them that everything will be okay.  
  
The kinds of lies one must believe to be with Rumpelstiltskin, Regina thinks faintly, and then focuses all of her energy on the sun.  
  
The wolf growls, taking a few lurching leaps towards Emma, who is starting to back herself into a corner, Regina can tell even if she isn’t looking; but they’re almost here, now.  If she can just intensify the sun a few more degrees, whatever hold the curse has on Red will fall in line with the tides and--  
  
Her knees buckle, and she feels the blood rush into her eyes, before bursting across the back of her brain; after that, it’s not unlike experiencing a sudden orgasm, where the entire world fades away before bending _sharply_ to her will.  
  
The wolf yips, twice, and then tips over onto its side.  
  
When she manages to open her eyes again, Emma is clicking the safety back onto her gun and Ruby Lucas is groggily looking around the gym, asking, “Hey--what happened?  Where are--”  
  
Then, she sees the body.  
  
Belle moves around Regina, moving towards the corner of the gym that Snow and the remaining children are in, and reaches for their hands; they make an almost silent procession out, a mockery of the kinds of paper chains that Henry was particularly adept at producing back in kindergarten, and right before they manage to leave the gym altogether, Ruby screams.  
  
Snow approaches, one tentative foot at a time, and slowly says, “Red, please; don’t look.  It’s not your fault, okay?  There wasn’t anything you could do; we were just talking to Belle and then--”  
  
It’s audible, the way that bile works its way up the girl’s body, before finally erupting out of her mouth amidst hysterical crying.  
  
It’s not a thought she has ever had about the Hot Topic-sporting waitress that Red had become in reinvisioned form, but the original version had always had a quiet, inner peace; something noble and proud that counteracted the wild, vicious thing that lived inside of her.  
  
There is none of that left now, in the girl crying out for someone to get it _out of her_ , gagging on spit in her mouth because there is nothing left for her to throw up, clots of dark mascara dripping from her chin as she heaves, as if her whole body is bucking up towards a moon that is not there.  
  
Snow settles on her knees by Red's side, holding her hair back and helping keep her low to the ground; as if the idea of her getting to her feet now can go anywhere worse than the small, mangled form lying in the free throw area of the gym, right next to a half-read copy of _The Wind in the Willows_.  
  
Emma circles around them, still holding her gun, and it isn’t until Regina manages a weak, “There isn’t anything left for you to shoot, Sheriff” that she seems to realize that her grip on it is white-knuckled and life-longing.  Her fingers relax, and she dislodges the clip and pulls out a few silvery-shined bullets that she then shoves in her back pockets.  
  
When Snow catches sight of those bullets, just a glimmer from the corner of her eye, her hold on Ruby slackens and she gets to her feet.  
  
Regina straightens also, unable to hide the shaking of her limbs, and then turns to Belle, because all Ruby is doing now is lying down, staring at matted, coagulating blood and crying.  “Call the Sheriff’s Department and get Deputy Mulan to call everyone’s parents, and see if she can track down Dr. Hopper.  I assume they’ll need counseling after this.”  
  
Belle, to her credit, doesn’t hesitate--just immediately reaches for her cellphone and starts dialing; but then exposure to monsters is kind of a theme to her life, Regina realizes, and it’s only that exposure that stops her from recoiling when the _other_ monster in the room addresses her like they’re old acquaintances, not captor and captive.  
  
“You were going to kill her,” Snow asks, moving towards Emma as if in a trance.  “You were going to _kill her?_ ”  
  
“I’m the fucking _Sheriff,_ Mary Margaret, and she just--”  Emma starts to say, before choking on the words and just jabbing a finger towards the remains of Ruby’s transformation.    
  
“She’s my _best friend_ ,” Snow shouts.  “It’s a curse, it’s not a _choice_!  She can control it if we just--”  
  
"It was a precaution," Emma snaps, running her hand over her mouth as she looks at the body and then closing her eyes briefly. "And I didn’t actually shoot anything, so _maybe_ let it go."  
  
“What the hell happened anyway?” Snow asks, now turning to Regina.  “How can something like this just come _back_ out of nowhere?  And what did you do to stop her?  Since when can you use magic like that again?”  
  
Regina takes a few seconds and then lowers her hands, casting done for the night.  “Since this world was exposed to _other_ worlds, dear.  The game has changed--for all of us, it appears.”  
  
“You’re saying this is our doing,” Snow says, before looking back at the shaking, weeping woman on the ground and the princess kneeling in front of her, murmuring soft words of comfort.  
  
“Well, it certainly isn’t mine, for once,” Regina says, tucking her hands in her pockets.  As always, after prolonged casting, they tingle as if she’s just taken a shot of some sort of narcotic.  It’s something she can ignore, but perhaps not in current company.  “You cannot continue living half-in, half-out, keeping portals opened while you try to recruit to your cause.”  
  
Emma shoots her an unreadable look at that and then looks back at her mother.  “My responsibility is to the safety of this town, Mary Margaret.  It’s not to--”  
  
“She’s your _godmother_ ,” Snow says, pleadingly.  “Were you even going to give her a chance?”  
  
Emma’s gaze flickers towards the child, and then back to Ruby, and then she takes a deep breath and looks at the clock over the checkout desk.  “I need to go and inform the parents.  Do you--”  
  
“Humpty and his wife,” Snow says, her shoulders slumping in a dignified way; she's the very picture of a grieving monarch.  “They live out by the hospital, on Elm.”  
  
“Like, _sat on a wall_?” Emma asks, raising her eyebrows.  “I thought that guy was an egg.”  
  
Snow looks as unimpressed as she’s ever appeared by her offspring.  “Yes, well, this world has done a lot to make our lives seem ridiculous, hasn’t it?”  
  
Emma uncomfortably shrugs in her jacket.  “I don’t know, your life seems pretty on par with--”  
  
“ You thought I was a _maid_ ,” Snow says, despairingly, and then turns back to her friends; her subjects.  
  
Her allies.  
  
Emma observes the vague rejection and seems to take it in stride, and then joins Regina, looking at her cautiously.  “You’re looking a little--like you need a blood transfusion.”  
  
Regina rolls her eyes.  “I thought you’d at least suggest _manna of the Gods_ by now, Miss Swan.”  
  
“Oh, that’s real?”  
  
“No,” Regina says, before smiling thinly.  “Just less ridiculous than the idea that magic is in _blood_.”  
  
That’s not entirely true, because _some_ magic is, but Emma nods all the same; and why would she know better?    
  
After a few seconds, the sheriff just licks her upper lip and then asks, lowly, “Can you stay here and supervise?  I need to figure out a way to get the body out without starting another riot--”  
  
“The riots will come, Emma.  Perhaps now is the time to decide on what you’ll choose to defend, because _all_ sides isn’t going to be an option,” Regina says, equally softly, and not without compassion.  
  
She remembers wanting _everything_ once, herself.  Her mother’s love; Daniel’s ring; Snow’s happiness.  It takes a lot for those kinds of desires to get dulled.  
  
Emma’s lip curls miserably, for a second, but then she looks at Regina plainly and says, “You know what side I’m on.  What about you?”  
  
Something changes, in that moment, even if it’s only rooted in an artificial eclipse and the senseless loss of life; and it’s possibly not, because neither of those factors change anything between her and Emma, whose mother is less than a foot away, but somehow not Emma’s first choice of confidante.  
  
“It seems we’ve finally found our common ground,” Regina just says, and watches as Emma holsters her half-loaded gun and straightens her meaningless badge, almost automatically.  
  
“Yeah.  It seems we have,” Emma then murmurs, before heading out the gym, head lifting with every step into a town that she’s adopted as _hers_.


	11. Chapter 11

She’s barely surprised when, later, Emma shows up at her house.  
  
“If you need more magic, I’m afraid you’ll have to--”  
  
“No, that’s not why I’m here,” Emma says, shortly.  
  
Her minor interference in the elements earlier today is now desperately trying to restore itself; the wind outside is more of a _gale_ , and the last few petals of the rose bushes that line the drive have been blown all over, a smattering of white on her front lawn.    
  
There’s something about Emma’s posture that makes Regina pause for a second, and then she laughs shortly.  “Sheriff, are you here to arrest me now that I’m actually dangerous again?”  
  
Emma exhales, as if this is the most trying conversation of her life, her breath misting in the wind.  “ _No_.  Though, let me tell you, Mary Margaret’s less than happy about the fact that you’re all juiced up, so for Henry’s sake I’m just going to ask that you take it easy.”  
  
“For Henry’s sake,” Regina repeats, and thinks of all the ways in which she could bind him to her once more; pull him in closer, make sure he never leaves her again.  
  
Oh, it would be so easy.    
  
“You don’t need to worry about little old me,” she finally just says, but it comes out so world-weary that it actually makes Emma sigh as well.  
  
“Gold stopped by the Department today.  Apparently Belle managed to talk him into not just killing Ruby, but he wants to know what our long-term plan is to get all of this under control again.  If we’re any closer to a _decision,_ or if we need some speeding along.”  
  
“And are you?” Regina asks, bracing herself against the door frame.    
  
Emma stays stoically silent for a few seconds and then says, “Yeah.   _I_ am.  I think there’s only one way that we can stop this from escalating--”  
  
“Oh, God, not the _curse_ again,” Regina says, not bothering to hide her exasperation; her eyes roll eagerly, despite how exhausted she is.  “Miss Swan, _honestly,_ if there was any chance that I could reclaim the life I lived here with Henry--”  
  
“Enough,” Emma says, hair whipping into her face; she angrily brushes it aside, the way she’s brushed aside so many things in the last few years.  Adoption laws, for one thing.  “You lied to me.”  
  
It’s almost funny; for all the times in the last thirty years she’s lied through her teeth, squeezing words out no matter how much they pained her, it figures that she finally gets taken to task over her pervasive dishonesty when she’s all but given it up.  “About what, exactly?”  
  
“About the _curse_.  You said that there isn’t any way to fix what we’re left with, here; that this is as happy as it gets.”  
  
“It is,” Regina says, grinding out the words slowly and steadily, as if she’s Mary Margaret Blanchard and Emma is Henry, learning about long division.  “You might not love your new existence, but it isn’t _cursed_ , Sheriff.”  
  
Emma swallows thickly, her throat bobbing, and then says, “Fine.  Maybe it’s not.  But what about a _new_ spell?”  
  
“ _Excuse_ me?”  
  
“What about--a different spell.  One that _fixes_ everything that isn’t right here.”  
  
Whatever her thoughts were about Emma’s desperation a while ago, she’s going to have to rewrite those, and feels her fingers curl up into a fist.  “You have _no_ idea what you’re talking about.  The price to pay for any magic on this kind of scale is _unimaginable_ , Miss Swan--do you have any idea what it cost me to cast the original curse?”  
  
“Yeah.  The heart of that which you loved the most,” Emma says, a squiggle of a frown appearing on her forehead.  
  
“What are you suggesting, dear?  That I off our son so that you don’t have to deal with your pitiful mommy issues?”  
  
Tendons in Emma’s neck pop dangerously for a second, but then she furls in on herself and says, “No.  But Gold says... that with me in the mix, it doesn’t have to work like _that_.”  
  
“Oh, I see,” Regina bites out, before stepping out of the house altogether, wrapping her arms around herself as the biting winter cold seeps into her bones almost instantaneously.  “ _Gold_ says.  And given that he’s been so reliable so far, given that his intentions for you and your family have always been so _good_ \--”  
  
“He’s not a liar,” Emma says, quietly.  
  
It takes more than Regina would like to admit, to not slap the unknowing insolence right off the sheriff’s face.  “No, I suppose you’re right.  In the most literal interpretation of the concept of _lies_ , he’s never fallen foul of holding himself to a very high standard.  You might want to ask Belle how that’s worked out for her, in practice.”    
  
“I don’t _trust_ him,” Emma says, emphatically.  Her knee jitters, as if there’s too much pressure inside of her building up and it’s going to erupt violently sooner rather than later.  Regina won’t be surprised if the first punch Emma throws lands on her face.  “But he says it can be done differently.  That because of what I am--you know, the child of pure love or whatever--”  
  
She says it in a way where it’s almost a curse in and of itself; it makes Regina sigh.  “Yes, there is powerful magic in you.  I can sense it, but--you don’t have what it takes to cast a curse like the one I did.  Even if you did, I would _never_ let you.”  
  
“I know, but … Gold says there’s another way.  A _different_ spell.”  
  
Intellectual interest in magic has always been the start of her downfall.  Once, she thought she had a purpose in discovering more and more about it--a body, preserved and waiting, ready for her to fill it up again with all of her love transformed--but the reality is, much like her mother, she’s always just been curious about how far it could go.  It makes her teeth grind like sandpaper, now, but she can’t resist saying, “Fine.  I’ll bite, Sheriff.  What is it?”  
  
“The original curse destroyed all happy endings,” Emma says, before staring at the ground with such focus that Regina wonders briefly if her heels will catch fire.  “Because that’s what you wanted to do.  That’s what you thought would... I don’t know.  But I’m not coming at it from that place.  I don’t want to ruin anyone’s life; I just want to make things better than they are now.”  
  
“And _how_ do you suppose that will work?  What is the _price_ for true happiness, Emma?”  
  
“Remembering,” Emma says, biting her lip and then looking away.  Like it’s too shameful to even say; to wish the same thing back on these people, but for the _right_ reasons this time.  “Gold says I can rewrite reality and solve everyone’s problems, but … they’d have to forget about what they’d been missing, before.  What was stopping them from being happy.”  
  
The throb in the middle of her chest is unexpected, and she closes her eyes to not think of him--not now, not ever again--as soon as the word _happy_ is raised.  Ending, that’s the word to focus on here; Emma wishes to end everything.  Lobotomize the population into a feeling of pure joy.  And, judging by the torn look on her face, she knows that it’s no less cruel than taking that joy away, than limiting everyone to feeling perhaps _increments_ of what they used to feel.  
  
A happily-ever-after in exchange for _knowing_.  
  
“You don’t have what it takes, dear,” she says, but winding tendrils of longing wrap themselves around the words.  She hates it; the cocoon she lives in is finally starting to feel like a place that may be worth preserving, so _of course_ Emma Swan’s only goal in life is now to turn her into a butterfly.  “You don’t have--”  
  
“Yeah, I didn’t think I did either,” Emma says, and then squares her jaw and looks at her unflinchingly, like she’s staring into the sun but willing to do it until her vision is spotted, until she can’t see anything but red anymore.  “But you see what the town is like, now.  You see what’s _happening,_ and our kid is right in the middle of it and he _knows_ that everything is wrong.  He thinks it’s _his fault,_ Regina--that because my love for him broke the curse, it’s _his fault_ that I can barely stand to be in a room with Mary Margaret and David, that I can’t _handle_ that they want to know me as their daughter.”  
  
It’s a low blow, bringing Henry into this, but Regina steels herself and says, “Life isn’t perfect.  It might just be time for him to learn that lesson.”  
  
“Yeah, and what about losing people he loves?  You think he’s old enough for that?”  Emma’s fingers curl into fists, seemingly subconsciously, and then she adds, “They’re getting ready to go, and today he asked about you, for the first time; about what we would do with you.”  
  
Gusts of wind sweep around them, her hair barely displaced and staticky and Emma’s gloriously free and tangled and flying up around her.  She’s sure they make quite a picture, this physical representation of good and evil, but much as the grass around her is damp and crackling with frostbite and the paint on her house is now turning a muted shade of white that hardly qualifies as white anymore, perhaps the picture they’re painting isn’t as straightforward as it once was.  
  
“You would do this to people you love,” Regina says, quietly.  “Take away their existences.”  
  
“I would do this _for_ people I love,” Emma says, her bottom lip trembling faintly.  “And not just for Henry.  Not just so Snow and Charming can actually _be_ happy, instead of feeling terrible because they’re really excited about having this kid and they don't know what to do about _me_. I’m doing it for Ruby, and for Archie, and Ariel, and... fuck, Regina, I’m thinking about doing it for everyone who can’t just go back to a land full of fairy tales and live a _happily ever after_ anymore.”  
  
Regina says nothing for a long time, letting the concept of that kind of empathy simmer inside of her briefly, until she thinks she might not be able to stop thinking about it at all.  It’s not as if she doesn’t know what it’s like, letting _go_ out of a sense of overwhelming compassion and love--but seeing it on a woman who, until a year ago, was afraid to stay put long enough to start caring is something else.  
  
It hits her sharply, how old she is and how much she knows.  
  
“Tell me what he said,” she says, relenting.  
  
For the first time in weeks, Emma’s eyes shine with the muted inspiration that Regina has always hated seeing.


	12. Chapter 12

There are always unspoken clauses; that’s the thing about Rumpelstiltskin that only those who have been played for fools by him know.  
  
Emma’s parents have probably made their own bargains, casting her destiny in stone without even realizing it, but regardless, Emma lacks the awareness to see through his machinations.  She can’t see the _bigger picture_ that Regina herself only figured out after stranding herself in a world where she, too, could never be whole again; until he’d come along with another deal.    
  
A son for a promise.  
  
The pawn shop is closed, but a light in the back clicks on when Emma’s fist pounds on the window, and Rumpel slowly makes his way over to them, cane pressing into the grooves on the floor boards, squeaking even through the shut door.  
  
Regina pulls her coat tighter around her as he lets them in, not asking any questions yet; he just looks at her and then smiles lightly.  “Dare I assume that we witnessed your handiwork, earlier today, dearie?”  
  
It’s not the kind of question that requires an answer, but she finds that she wants to give one anyway; just so she doesn’t appear cowed by him.  “Feel free to thank me whenever, Rumpel.”  
  
There’s the mildest hint of surprise in his eyes, but then he inclines his head.  “Right you are.  Consider yourself owed a favor.”  
  
“I’ll cash it in immediately,” she says, as Emma wanders over to the cases holding the classical guns he keeps locked away.  Still fascinated by tools that will not help her in the life she’s now living, Regina thinks, before looking back at Rumpel.  “The Sheriff tells me that you have a spell stored away that will do the opposite of what _I_ did, with the curse.  What I want to know is _why_ you want to cast it.”  
  
He looks at her for a few seconds, slowly tilting his head, and then laughs, pointing at her with his cane.  “Look who has learned her _lessons!_ ”  
  
Emma looks over, but wisely--for once--opts for staying silent.  
  
“If I throw in a _please_ , will you answer?” Regina asks, after a moment.  She’s feeling the start of a migraine, and when her hand strays to her temple, Rumpel looks at her knowingly and waves his hand in front of her face.  
  
Gone.  Just like that.  
  
The idea that she could have ever opposed him, instead of merely acting as the instrument that carried out his wishes, is laughable.  
  
“I’ll give you the short answer,” he says, after a second; the favor is owed, after all, and so he has to give her _something_.  “I need the boundary gone.  The _savior_ , of course, is a magical conduit that can actually accomplish this for me.  She has agreed to lend me her power, given that the outcome of the spell is what _she_ benefits from.  It’s all delightfully simple, wouldn’t you agree?”  
  
She could ask what he wants outside of the town boundary, but truthfully: it hardly matters.  All that matters is Henry; and if going along with this ill-advised plan is what it will take for the sheriff to make good on her promises to not separate them, then here she is.    
  
She crosses her arms over her chest and says, “Very well.  What’s the spell?”  
  
A scroll appears in his hand on command, and he tosses it over to her; when it unfurls, it hits the top of her feet and then unwinds all the way across the aisle, before crashing up against another display case.  
  
“The _short_ version,” she says, eyeing the paperwork for a scant second.  
  
“Not interested in the fine print, dearie?” he asks, his gold tooth gleaming at her in the half-dark store.  
  
“I haven’t agreed to anything yet; I’ll do my homework if I decide you actually _have_ something, here,” she counters, scanning down the scroll for the first few items needed.  “Much as this world has to offer, it’s a little _short_ on magical ingredients.”  
  
“I think we can make do,” he says, almost teasingly now.  
  
There has always been something seductive about the way he’s pitched magic to her; power, _yes_ , but also _skill_.  The part of her that took pride in show jumping also blossomed under his instruction in the darker arts, where precision and control and grace mattered exactly as much as force and intent had.  
  
She’s not a naive child anymore, the way she had been when he’d taken her under his wing; so broken down already, but still so trusting.  Still, there is something in the way they’re looking at each other now that reminds her of the few times in her life when she’s actually felt like she had purpose.  
  
Before Henry, anyway.  
  
“Look,” Emma says, impatiently shifting from one foot to the next.  “I don’t really know anything about any of this, so can one of you maybe spell it out for the rank amateur, here.  What kind of _ingredients_ are we talking about?”  
  
As if passing the torch, Rumpel nods to her to explain, and Regina fights a sigh and looks at the sheriff.  “It’s not unlike cooking.  Casting a spell is akin to following a highly detailed recipe; there are core ingredients and flavoring agents, and only used in the right combination do you get the outcome you desire.”  
  
“So what’s the core ingredient here?” Emma asks.  
  
“I’m so glad you asked, dearie.  Here it is!” Rumpel says, smiling easily, before twirling his cane in his hand.  “Required: _one_ heart of one most loathed.”    
  
Regina half-expects him to start hopping from toe to toe around them, ensnaring them with invisible threads that he will snip when he’s good and ready to.    
  
For all the monster he is, the monsters he creates are so much more impressive, somehow.  
  
Emma laughs, sounding surprised into it.  “You’re kidding, right?”  
  
“He’s not known for his sense of humor,” Regina says, dryly.  
  
“That I am not, no!” he crows, before pinning Emma with one of his darkest looks.  “What I am, however, is an _honest_ man.  That’s it, dearie.  That’s the crux of the matter.  We need the heart of someone you hate.  You must be willing to vanquish pure evil in order to benefit from _pure love_.”  
  
“Yeah, okay--so what if we don’t want to--”  
  
Rumpel throws his hands up, looking as innocent as he ever does.  “No can do.  There is no bargaining, no trickery.  I don’t _make_ the rules, _Miz Swan_ , I merely know what they are--and Regina here will tell you that one _doesn’t_ want to disobey the laws of magic.”  
  
Regina shrugs, but doesn’t deny it.  
  
“Okay.   _Hypothetically,_ then,” Emma says, swallowing.  “ _You’re_ someone.  So I guess we can use your heart and--”  
  
“Ah ah, dearie!” he chants, taking a creaky step back and leaning heavily on his crutch.  “ _Mine_ is not part of your bargain; and don’t think you can do this without me, just because you have my... most gifted apprentice here with you.  She’s not what she used to be; not hardly at all.  No, I’m afraid you’ll have to do better than that.”  
  
When Regina looks at him, it’s not him she sees, and she nearly bites through her tongue to not lash out.  It would only let him know that he _still_ holds the power to hurt her; even now, when pleasing him is about the last thing on her mind.  
  
Emma stays silent for a few seconds, and then closes her eyes.  “Okay, well, hypothetically... there’s someone else.”  
  
Rumpel titters, like a mockery of a mockingbird, and then rubs his hands together, letting his cane rest against his thigh.  “So much hate inside of you, for someone so... full of love.  Who is it, dearie?  The child’s father?  Or dare I hope for something more spectacular--the puppeteer who stranded you, or the fairy godmother who sold you up the roadside, so to say?  The wooden boy, selfish and insecure?”  
  
Emma’s head lifts slowly, as if being wound up by a crank, but when she looks at Regina there’s a lot of fire there that’s been missing lately.  “None of the above.”  
  
“Who, then?” Rumpel asks, now losing interest in the game; and that’s when he becomes dangerous, Regina wants to say.  That’s when you have to strike _him_ , before he catches hold of that dearest to you and slowly strangles it to death.  
  
Emma says nothing for a long few seconds, but then lowers her eyes and takes a deep breath.  “Cora Mills.”  
  
Rumpelstiltskin slowly turns his head to look at Regina and then smiles, his yellow-golden teeth like nails in his mouth, ready to trap her in place.  “My oh _my_.  Isn’t this something.  The savior, asking you to commit matricide on top of the patricide you’ve already committed!  I couldn’t have written a better _ending_ ,” and his hand skitters at his side, before curling upwards, “had I tried.”  
  
Regina has thickened air before, but it has never thickened without her permission, turning foggy and leaden as it sinks down her lungs and settles inside of her, next to the space her heart is meant to occupy.  It can’t, of course.  Not fully, not anymore.  Breaking the curse hasn’t changed that, just as casting the curse has never changed how she feels about …  
  
“I’m--I shouldn’t have said that,” Emma says, studying the tips of her boots intently and then raising her eyes again, shaking her head.  “If this is what it’ll take, obviously the answer is no.  We’ll figure something else out, because this is... _no_.”  
  
When their eyes meet, Regina swallows past the toxicity, and then murmurs, “Sometimes there _are_ no alternatives, dear.”  
  
“We’ll find one,” Emma says, more firmly.  
  
Rumpel's cane taps on the floor and then he crouches low, cat-like, catching Regina’s eye.  “Why so glum, dearie?  You’ve already tried to rid yourself of her once; if anything, it should be easier _now_.”  
  
It’s true.  It’s true, and yet it’s not.  
  
“I’m not _killing_ someone to save anyone else.  That’s--we might as well go to the prison now, if that’s the outcome,” Emma says, with a shudder.  “C’mon, Regina.  Let’s go.”  
  
For one moment, Regina considers telling the sheriff that she doesn’t respond well to orders, but being in Rumpelstiltskin’s presence for too long is dangerous for her; already, she’s starting to feel weak of mind, weak of spirit, and if he studies her for a few moments longer, she’ll ask for more details.  
  
The more she knows, the harder it’s always been for her to do the right thing.  
  
“No deal,” Emma says, passing by her and opening up the door.  “Just so we’re clear.”  
  
Rumpel smiles, and then just responds with an all-too-pleased sounding, “For now.”  
  
…  
  
Once outside, Emma looks down Main Street--towards where Snow’s apartment is--and then bodily caves a little.  
  
It’s an opportunity for Regina to dig in her nails, but the urge to do that is so entirely gone from her now that she just sighs and says, “I _have_ a guest bedroom.”  
  
“ _What_?” Emma asks, turning around and looking at her with enough shock for Regina to feel her face sour.  
  
“You’d be surprised what a ten year old picks up on.  If the conversations about his future are likely to continue intensifying, it might be in his best interest if he’s not in a position to overhear them--and I have a guest bedroom, so you could come and... supervise,” Regina says, as gracefully as she can.    
  
It says a lot for her energy levels that it mostly just comes out weary.  
  
Emma’s entire expression opens up for a brief second, disbelief warring with gratitude, and then she rubs at her cheek and says, “Mary Margaret _does_ think someone should keep an eye on you, now that you’re magical again.”  
  
“Of course,” Regina says; it’s not even worth an eye-roll, and after a moment she just smiles, razor-sharp.  “If you like, we can tell her that you handcuff me to the bed every night.”  
  
It takes Emma a second, but then she laughs, as if there simply isn't any other way to cope anymore.  
  
...  
  
There’s only about a knuckle of scotch left in the bottle when Regina kicks off her shoes and lifts her feet up on her desk and looks at Emma, who is staring into the fire, glass pressed up against her sternum.  It’s clear what part of the day she’s reliving; for all the horrors Regina has inflicted, they’ve always been fairly _clean_.  Even Daniel...  
  
She sighs, and thinks of something else; Henry sleeping upstairs, confused by his new living situation but not entirely _opposed_ , distracts her for a few moments.  
  
Then, she looks at the sheriff and a more obvious distraction comes to mind.  
  
“I’m surprised you didn’t name _me_.”  
  
Emma blinks, slow and absentminded, and then looks over.  “Name you where?”  
  
“The pawn shop.  Hearts of people you hate,” Regina clarifies, swishing the dregs of a fifty year old bottle of Glenfiddich around in her glass; it glints amber in the light of the fire, like gold.  “My mother, but not me?   _I’m_ the one who stole your childhood, dear.  The one who took us to where we are today.”  
  
Emma is quiet for a long moment and then murmurs, “Nobody _made_ them put me in that tree.  I’ve read about the goddamned prophecy as well; they signed me up for this crap before I was even born.”  
  
“You do realize the alternative would’ve been … perpetual infancy, do you not?” Regina asks, tilting her head back.  
  
Emma doesn’t really respond to that at all, and then just finishes the rest of her drink and puts her glass down on the table, square on a coaster.  “You did a fucked up thing to a lot of people, but Henry is a great kid, and I’m not going to pretend it’s because of anything I did.”  
  
“Gracious of you,” Regina mumbles, soft enough that Emma can’t really hear it.  
  
The sheriff eventually sighs and then rubs at her eyes.  “Does it eat at you, who he’s related to?”  
  
Regina pauses and then says, carefully, “If I’m honest, I never think of it.  He’s my son.  Perhaps _yours_ , but Snow White and Prince Charming have nothing to do with him as far as I’m concerned.”  
  
Emma smiles, flatly, and then pours the last of the bottle.    
  
“Yeah.  That’s kind of how I feel, too.”


	13. Chapter 13

It’s barely a day and a half later when Snow calls another meeting.  
  
Regina gets a dirty look from her, this time, but the other townspeople present are too busy fighting amongst themselves and distrusting each other to even really notice her.    
  
It feels a lot like being at Leopold’s court again, she thinks, before sitting next to Henry and giving him a small squeeze on his arm.  
  
“Kid, you don’t have to be here--” Emma starts to say , but he shakes his head.  
  
“I do.  It’s important that we do the right thing.  We’re supposed to be heroes and heroes don’t kill other people unless they really _have_ to,” he says, subdued and pale and small.  
  
They exchange a small look over his head, and then look at Snow, who has caught up on aging in the last few weeks.  That can’t be good for the baby, Regina thinks, and then has to fight a sneer at the mere idea that any such thing concerns her.  
  
“We realize there have been a number of incidents lately that have been cause for concern.  I’m here to tell you that we’re trying to work to resolve them as quickly as possible, but--”  
  
“But until you do, your pet _wolf_ is out there eating children,” Albert Spencer calls out, from the back of the room; he’s surrounded by his advisers and allies of old, and being glared at testily by Robin Hood and his band of followers from across the aisle.  All the old rivalries have sparked again, it seems, and Regina feels her muscles tense at the idea that Snow will not rule all of her subjects with a strong fist.  
  
She herself may not _love_ the people, but she had an opportunity to kill them all twenty-eight years ago and declined it; she’ll be damned if they start killing each other _now_.  
  
“Red is taking every possible precaution; she’s under guard at the library--” Snow says, her face heating up.  
  
“The _library_?” Jafar asks, before laughing and stroking his beard.  “Your _majesty_ , the library is hardly a Cave of Wonders, sealed and impenetrable except by those _particularly_ fortunate...”  
  
Aladdin gets to his feet in the back row and gets yanked down again as quickly by Jasmine and Abu, and Regina tries to stop from rolling her eyes.  
  
“Measures have been taken to fortify the library,” Charming announces, in a loud and vaguely royal boom.  It successfully quiets down the room for just a few moments, and he gently nudges Snow into continuing.  
  
“This world is becoming chaotic,” she says, scanning the crowds.  “We can all feel it, and while we all have our differences and some feuds have lingered longer than they should have, our home world is _big enough_ for all of us.  We can coexist there, and far more safely than we can here.”  
  
“So what, you propose we all go back?” Jefferson calls out, laughing a little wildly.  “That’s--insane.  Why would you ever want to bring back the people who caused us to end up here?   _You_ , of all people, should understand why _Regina_ can’t come--”  
  
“She won’t,” Charming says.  
  
Henry stiffens next to her, and her hand brushes up against Emma’s when she tries to reach for one of his, offering what little comfort she can.  
  
“This will be _her_ prison, and hers alone.  No one else stays behind,” Snow adds.  
  
Archie is up on his feet in an instant.  “Snow, you can’t be _serious_.  You want to bring back her mother but leave her?  What--what is she supposed to _do_ here?”  
  
“It’s none of our concern,” Snow says, in a rushed exhalation that feels both angry and condemned.  It’s the most relatable she’s sounded to Regina, in quite some time.  “It’s no different from locking her in the darkest, deepest dungeon in the realm; except this time, we can be sure that she cannot find a key.”  
  
Archie looks like wants to say more, but his throat bobs in a way that seems almost aggressive--like another voice is trying to talk out of him--and so he swallows the rest of his words and sinks back down onto his chair.  
  
“What of her mother?” Sneezy asks, wiping hurriedly at his nose.  “We kill her?  Or we bring her?”  
  
“We brought her here once; we can bring her back, and detain her there,” Charming says, before looking at his adopted father at the back of the room.  “She will be put on trial when she returns, as will those of you who _also_ have crimes to answer for.”  
  
Snow takes a deep breath, and then looks directly at Henry and says, “Everyone else, we’ve fought and defeated.  We may have to fight again, but we will win.  But what the Queen has made us lose--”  
  
Henry lowers his eyes to his lap and squeezes them shut after a moment, and Regina presses her lips to his cheek, whispering, “It’s all right, dear.  It will be all right.”  
  
“All in favor?” Snow asks.  
  
She doesn’t look away from Henry as they count hands; all she notices is that neither hers, nor Henry’s, nor Emma’s lift.  
  
…  
  
There is hardly any hot chocolate left in the house by the time Henry finally manages to fall into a fitful sleep; and as soon as he’s out, Emma gets a call and is gone again.  
  
Her presence in the house has been unobtrusive so far, but it’s mostly to do with the fact that she works twenty hour days to keep the peace.  Today’s vote produced a more severe fracturing than the one Snow and Charming attempted to skim over before, and it will do nothing to cool down already hot tempers.  The notion of _trials_ rubbed many the wrong way, it seems, and so off the sheriff goes, to stop villains from engaging in villainy.  
  
Given the endless work days, there is also hardly any _coffee_ left in the house, but that hardly matters when she can conjure up more at will.  As long as Emma asks, Henry presumably won’t have any problems with it.  
  
She heads back downstairs and sighs deeply when there’s a frantic knock on her door, but heads over regardless.  
  
Snow is standing there, in a ridiculous little hat and an impractical white coat, and seems utterly caught off guard by Regina’s appearance in the doorway of her own house.  
  
“She’s not here,” Regina says, already closing the door again.  
  
Snow slams a hand against the door and blocks the entryway with her foot, and then says, “Then I’ll talk to _you_ , because I don’t know what more I can say to her to get her to understand--”  
  
“That you’re actually being merciful?” Regina asks, raising her eyebrows slightly.  
  
Snow bristles.  “Well, yes, actually, if you want to get--”  
  
“Oh, I know, dear.  I _know_.  When I consider all the things I have considered doing to you, and all the things that you have attempted to do to me--exile is really _quite_ merciful,” Regina agrees.  She smiles after a moment and then says, “Perhaps if your daughter had grown up in our realm, she’d see things similarly.”  
  
Pain blooms on her cheek as if it’s early spring, and she cups it carefully, relishing the tang of blood in her mouth as Snow pulls her hand back again.  
  
“I gave you _so many chances,_ ” Snow says, her eyes filling with unwarranted tears.  “There were so many times when we could have made a peace, and you spat in my face every single time.  What this will do to Henry--it’s on _your_ hands, Regina.  Not mine.”  
  
Regina lets her hand fall back at her side and looks at Snow plainly.  “I don’t think so, but then my actions cost you a relationship with _your_ child; one could argue that you’re merely getting even.”  
  
Snow angrily wipes at her eyes and then shakes her head.  “I don’t know why I even bothered coming here.”  
  
“Emma, apparently.  I expect she’s in town; there was something about Pinocchio.”  
  
Snow’s eyes dull at the name, and then she turns and marches off again, nearly running by the time she reaches the end of the drive.  
  
Regina closes the door and leans against it heavily for a few moments, and then heads back up the stairs, to watch her son sleep while she still can.  
  
…  
  
Emma wakes her up in the middle of the night; not intentionally, but she hasn’t lived here long enough to know about the creaking of the sixth step from the top, and so her socked feet trigger a long groan in the wood.  
  
Regina straightens in Henry’s desk chair and then catches Emma in the hallway; the Sheriff’s tugging off her coat and then reaching for the buttons on her shirt, but stops when Regina turns on the overhead light and looks over, her eyes red and wet.  
  
“What is it?” Regina asks, more out of habit than actual concern.  
  
“August,” Emma says, and then shakes her head.  “It’s--the portal.  The leaking from the other world.  Gepetto found him this morning and--”  
  
“Ah.”  
  
Emma stares at the carpet on the landing for a few moments and then says, “I’m just going to shower and then I’m heading back out.  It’s a full moon, I--”  
  
“You’re barely conscious, Sheriff.  You’re not going to be any use to anyone if you keep running these hours,” Regina says, a little more firmly than she means to.  “And there will come a time when you’ll be _all_ that’s left to protect Henry, so I’m ordering you to get some rest.  I’ll take your guard shift.”  
  
Emma opens her mouth, as if she’s going to protest, but then she closes it again and just sighs.  “Okay.  It’s just you and Belle, so--”  
  
“We’ll be _fine_ ,” Regina drawls, before heading back to her bedroom and putting her heels back on.  
  
It won’t be long now, until she’s all that remains in this realm.  She might as well enjoy people while they’re still an option.  
  
…  
  
The wolf is an ugly thing.  
  
Belle doesn’t seem to mind, however, and is merely drinking a cup of tea while reading a Michael Crichton book; when Regina raises her eyebrows at it, she stiffens for a few seconds but then just says, “Other people read fantasy for escapism, but I find that science is actually quite comforting.  Dinosaurs--”  
  
“Henry is a fan,” Regina says, settling onto the other chair in front of the door marked _Employees Only_ that the wolf keeps pounding up against with enough force for it to dent outward.  “I assume Rumpel has--”  
  
“Yes, that’s his work,” Belle admits, putting a Disney bookmark in the middle of the book-- _Belle_ , of course, who looks absolutely nothing like her, but perhaps that’s the joke--and then closing it slowly.  “Is Emma all right?”  
  
“Sleeping,” Regina says, rotating her ankle in a slow circle and then glancing around the library.  “There won’t be much rest to have, once you all start moving back.”  
  
It’s nothing more than a flash in Belle’s eyes that she catches in the shadows of the Tiffany reading lamp on the desk, but it’s there, and she decides to wait for an explanation.  
  
“He doesn’t want to go back,” is what Belle ultimately says, before reaching for a second tea cup and pouring Regina some Lady Gray as well.  “He won’t, I don’t think.”  
  
“Do you know what it is that lies beyond the town boundaries that he cannot let go of?” Regina asks.  This isn’t unlike the regular citizen’s complaints meetings she’s had as the mayor, where she was made to talk to people who feared her and disliked her in other lives with unending patience and promises of change.  
  
The fact that Belle knows full well who she’s dealing with seems to make no difference, and Regina smiles faintly when she realizes that, of course, where they are now, Belle has astoundingly little to fear.  The man she loves, perhaps, if she’s finally grown sensible enough; but he will keep her safe as houses until the end of the world.  
  
“It’s not for me to say,” Belle says, softly, and then shakes her head.  “I don’t know what will happen if they try to force his hand.  If--”  
  
“Well, dear, I suspect they’ll fail and he’ll kill them,” Regina says, with a sigh.  “Unless, of course, you manage to talk him _out_ of doing that, but the last time he promised you _he_ wouldn’t kill anyone--”  
  
Belle lifts  her cup with shaky hands and then trembles briefly.  “There are many things about him that I would change; always.  But we can’t help who we love.”  
  
“No, we cannot,” Regina agrees, and flinches when the sound of claws digging into reinforced steel echoes emptily through the library.    
  
“I voted against the proposal, for what it’s worth,” Belle says, after a few seconds of that ringing, aching noise reverberating inside of Regina’s head.  
  
There are so many things that Regina could say, in response, but it’s late and Belle is surprisingly pleasant company, for someone so hopelessly forgiving and optimistic, and so she just reaches for the sugar cubes on the table and lets one gently sink into the tea.  
  
“Given what Rumpel’s involvement in the curse was, it hardly seems fair,” Belle adds, barely audibly, and Regina stirs her tea in slow, even movements.  
  
“Everyone needs someone to blame for their misfortunes, dear.  It’s only human,” she says, when Belle looks at her expectantly.  
  
The wolf snarls at them from behind the window in the door, and then whimpers, before disappearing from sight.  Regina thinks of Henry, and wonders who _he_ is blaming, now that he’s no longer blaming her.


	14. Chapter 14

On her drive back home, right as the sun is starting to rise out past the clocktower, she hears sirens in the distance.    
  
For a few moments, she drives on, knowing that if it’s serious someone will call her; and then realizes that, no, if it’s serious, they’ll call _Emma_ , who may or may not call her.  As Henry’s most recent babysitter, it’s unlikely Regina wouldn’t be updated either way--but the extent of her involvement in any given day’s rescue attempt is mostly up to whether or not fists can or cannot resolve something.  
  
She pauses at the red at the end of Main, and then looks at her phone; three bars, no messages.  
  
Perhaps she’s finally withering, too, if it means that she just sighs and puts the car back in drive and heads back to her house, where she finds Emma on the phone, holstering her gun and reaching for Henry’s baseball bat--now in the foyer, as a precaution to _God_ knows what.  
  
“Everything okay?” Emma asks, ending the call as Regina approaches the steps.  
  
Regina nods.  “They’re having breakfast.  In human form.”  
  
“Okay, good,” Emma says, running a hand through her hair.  “I’ve got to run; Sean and Peter--”  
  
“Peter?”  
  
“You know, Pan--forever young, might be able to fly,” Emma says, distractedly.  
  
Regina has no idea who she’s referencing, but then she never _did_ know everyone who got sucked into the curse; it just swallowed up most of the land, seemingly, and that was that.  “Well, it hardly matters--what’s the emergency?”  
  
“We caught a Twitter conversation--”  
  
“A _what_ now?”  
  
Emma looks at her, a hint of annoyance flashing across her face, before zipping up her jacket with a harsh tug.  “I’ve had Ella monitoring what everyone is talking about to see where problems are forming, and she thinks that there may be a plot to break Cora out of the asylum.  Spearheaded by uh, King George and … that fucking snake from The Jungle Book--”  
  
Put like that, it all sounds a little ridiculous, but Regina says, “You’ll need magical reinforcement--”  
  
“ _No._ Stay with Henry.  He needs whichever one of us is strongest to defend him.  You’re powered up, right?  You didn’t spend all day using magic to entertain the kid?”  
  
“I’m not a _cellphone_ , Miss Swan,” Regina says, rolling her eyes.  “The battery doesn’t deplete if I do some basic casting.”  
  
Emma sighs deeply and then shoulders the baseball bat.  “Whatever--can you protect him or _not_?”  
  
“With my life,” Regina says, plainly, and stands aside on her own driveway to let Emma pass by.  “And for the record--my mother plays notoriously poorly with others, so she may actually not be involved in whatever scheme this is.  Whatever it is they’re planning--”  
  
“They want to use the portal without us,” Emma says, before adding, “You know.  Without the good guys, without trials.  They want an all evil empire.  Like the Death Star.”  
  
Regina exhales slowly and then smiles wryly.  “ _Of course_.  That’s what was missing; selfish _bad_ intentions, to rival selfish _good_ intentions.”  
  
“This whole town--” Emma says, and then clamps her lips together, shaking her head.  “Never mind.  I’ll see you later.”  
  
Regina watches her go, the decrepit yellow Bug only starting after three attempts; it’s getting dark overhead, through none of her own interference, and it won’t be long now until the sun is blotted again, the weather seemingly befitting all the moods in town at once.  
  
Thinking about any of this will resolve nothing, and so she heads back inside and slips off her heels and goes back to Henry’s bedroom.  
  
For now, he sleeps peacefully, and she’ll do whatever it takes to preserve that option for him.  
  
…  
  
When the crash sounds, downstairs, she knows.  
  
She barricades the door to the best of her ability even as Henry’s head lifts, groggy and sleep-mussed, and he says, “Mom, what’s--”  
  
“Stay quiet.  Get ready to climb out the window--remember that trick with the sheets?” she asks, and when he blinks his eyes open more forcefully, before nodding, she offers him the best smile she can.  “Good--do it again.  I’ll help you out if I have to, but--”  
  
“What’s _happening_?  Are they coming to get you?” he asks, more urgently now, and then scrambling out of bed and stumbling towards her.  “They _can’t_.  I’ll protect you--Emma says she won’t let that happen and--”  
  
“Henry--sweetheart, listen to me.  I will do what I can to stop them--”  
  
“Without killing anyone, _right_?” he asks, emphatically, his eyes wide and round the way his birth mother’s have been for weeks now, staring at all the inhabitants of the town, increasingly more eccentric and book-based the longer their memories have been back.  “Because you promised--”  
  
“I know, I won’t kill anyone,” she says, and hopes she can make good on it.  “But to concentrate on this--to stop--”  
  
Another crash sounds, and she thinks about the paint chipping on the front door and how that had seemed problematic once; something to remedy.  She won’t have a front door _left_ by the time they’re done with her.  
  
“I can’t do this if I have to worry about your safety,” she tells him, more abruptly, air burning in her lungs.  “Do you understand?  I need you to be _safe_ , or my concentration will be split and I will not be able to defend myself.  So _go_.  Get Emma, if you can--”  
  
He nods, but his lips are trembling and his face--so small, so innocent still--screws up until he’s crying a little and then wiping at his eyes.  
  
“Henry--please.  I love you--now _go_ ,” she implores him, wishing that she had the time to be anything other than the stern authority figure that he’s rebelled against for so long.  
  
She doesn’t, however, and when he returns to the bed and starts pulling off his sheets, she looks at the door to his bedroom and takes a deep breath.  
  
Then, before he can stop her, she steps through it and locks it behind her, soundproofing it quickly and then walking down the stairs, on bare feet and in a wrinkled skirt.  It’s a step up from the robe, but she looks as if she’s been awake for a full day, and the woman they will be trying to execute will seem old and world-weary, not powerful and victorious.  
  
Her ending, it seems, will be tragic.  
  
There is a part of her that almost relishes it, and as she stands in the foyer, looking up briefly at the dust-caked chandelier overhead and then watching as the axe shatters the wood in the center of her front door, she feels an odd sort of peace come over her.  
  
The first thing to poke through the door is Jafar’s scepter, and she watches as it winds around, turning snake-like until it can coil around the handle and pull, before the door itself swings open and in step Jafar, Scar, and the hyenas.    
  
“Only five of you?  This is almost insulting, boys,” she says, after a moment, with a small smile.  “After what I did to you--”  
  
“Get the _son_ ,” Jafar says, in that oily, smug tone of voice he says everything.  “She’ll be easier to talk to if we have him.”  
  
The lollygagging hyena takes the stairs, two at a time, and starts pulling on the door.  She tries not to think of what he’ll find; hopes that for _once_ in his life, Henry actually does as he’s told, but given whose genes are roiling inside of him at all times, it might be too much to ask for.  
  
“Is this a recruitment visit or are you just here to eliminate the potential competition?” she asks, after a second.  The temptation to cross her arms and seem cavalier is there, but two of them will come at her physically and the third _will not_.  Small party or not, they chose well.  
  
Scar grins at her, muscles bulging underneath his leather jacket, and then says, “Do you _want_ to join us, Your Majesty?”  
  
She finds, being faced with an actual offer, that the answer is actually _no_.  That whatever it was that resided in her for decades, that the thing that kept her awake for years on end, just wishing to cut someone as deeply as she’d been cut, is seemingly sedated.  Thoughts of Snow will never not turn her skin inside out, but the idea of living up to Henry’s worst fears of her--  
  
“Not today, I’m afraid,” she says, smirking.  “I’m not much for sharing, you see.”  
  
“ _Good_ ,” Jafar says, slow and winding, before smiling back at her in a way that’s as pointed as his beard.  “I was hoping you would say that.  Twenty eight years of believing I was a _carpet salesman_ \--the indignity of it would be a hard thing to swallow in favor of an alliance.”  
  
The Pride start to circle her, after only the slightest of nods from Scar, and then Jafar straightens his scepter and smiles at her a little wider.  
  
“It’s been too long since I’ve had a worthwhile opponent.  The _boy_ merely tricked me into defeat, but you--you I will vanquish with honor.”  
  
He actually bows to her, and she struggles not to laugh; however cartoonish the impressions of most of them in this world are, they’re rooted in a bizarre accuracy that makes her want to renounce all the black in her wardrobe in favor of something less _obvious_.  Villain or not, she’d hate to be as predictable as most of her equivalents from the other stories are.  
  
At least Maleficent had some grace, she thinks, as he casts his first spell and she deflects it easily; but like any great predator, he merely wants to play with her a little while first.  
  
 _Please, please run,_ she thinks, and then raises her palms until they’re fully vertical.  
  
“You will have to try harder than that, dear,” she says, and smiles when he does.  
  
…  
  
What happens in the minutes that follow does not become clear to her until a year later; all she knows is that she’s barely worked up a sweat when a voice from next to the house says, sweetly, “All boys love adventure, Henry, darling--but eventually we all have to grow up, you see.”  
  
Her eyes lose Jafar’s for a moment, no more than that, but when he hurls a cobra at her--and something about that is _so_ ridiculously ironic that she actually thinks, _how much of this was pre-written in a prophecy we’re not even aware of?_ \--she’s too late in deflecting it, and two long, needle-thin fangs sink into her shoulder.  
  
Henry is bound, and for a few moments, she is paralyzed.  
  
Henry is bound and floating, also, and being gently ushered into the room like a corpse at a funeral, except nobody is holding him up; he’s just hovering with straps all around his torso and legs, and her mother walks behind him calmly, flicking her wrist sideways and pinning Jafar to the wall.  
  
“I see your negotiation did not go well,” Cora says, blandly, before looking at Regina with that disappointed head tilt.  “And that you’re _still_ clinging to some illusion that doing the _right thing_ will eventually earn you the love that you’re so desperate for.”  
  
When Regina raises her right hand, the leather around Henry squeaks and his skin turns bluish almost immediately.  
  
“Your kind of love, darling; it’s nothing but _weakness_.”  
  
Never in all of her years did she ever think that she’d pray for Emma Swan to come bursting through the door on a heroic, foolhardy rescue mission of some kind, but it’s approximately all she’s left with, now.  She’s alone; and her mother is holding the only card that she herself won’t play.  
  
“What is it you want?” she asks, letting her hand fall again.  
  
“ _Greatness_ ,” her mother says.  
  
Regina tries to think, tries to conjure up some way out of this scenario, but there seems to be only one exit and it’s the one where she agrees with her mother; agrees like she did once before, agrees like she did that night with Daniel, and God, _God_ , it means that Henry is going to die no matter what she does, now.  
  
She closes her eyes briefly and then murmurs a spell that puts him to sleep; his eyes flutter closed with a quick inhalation, and his expression relaxes.  Only then does she look at her mother again.  
  
“Regina, darling, it’s so very simple; he’s not even _yours_.  You could have _your own_ child--don’t you realize that?  We could take over the lands, and you could be a queen once more; you could raise the royal heir, and not--Snow White’s bastard _grandson_.”  
  
She licks her lips briefly, and then closes her eyes.  “I’ll go along with your plan, but Henry comes.”  
  
“I think not.  Your attachment to the boy is a distraction,” Cora says, in a steely voice that Regina knows precedes the whips, the thorns, the room she can’t get out of.  “I’ve seen what _distraction_ does to you, darling.  It’s in your best interest to just trust me--to trust your mother.  I’ve always known what’s best for you, and in this instance, it’s letting _go_.  He’s not of our blood.  He will _never_ be of our blood, and at most, he will betray you the way that your precious _Snow_ once did.”  
  
The hyenas shift nervously, and Regina thinks of all the spells she’s ever studied, ever memorized, ever _heard_ of.  Not one has what it will take to stop this with only herself as a casualty.  She cannot, _cannot_ kill them all.  Not quickly enough.  Not without losing Henry.  
  
“I only want what’s best for you,” Cora repeats, taking an assured step forward, and offering her the seemingly sincere smile that she’d craved so much as a child; the one that spoke promises of love and adoration, the kind that Snow White once turned on her and that had then felt like a weapon.  “Don’t you _see_ that, Regina?  I’ve only ever wanted what’s best for you.”  
  
The very idea makes her laugh, and so she does.  She laughs, and thinks it may very well be one of the last things she does.  
  
“Oh, mother,” she then says, and offers a smile of her own.  “In the sixty years I’ve been alive, that may still be the most unbelievable lie I’ve ever been told.”  
  
As soon as Cora’s lip curls, she knows that she’s about to see the real woman who’s raised her, possibly for the first time ever.  
  
The room erupts in flames no more than a second after that first seemingly sincere facial tic, but Henry sleeps on and she knows enough about fire herself to not allow it to be used against her.  
  
 _Soon_ , but not yet, it will all be over.  
  
…  
  
Her vision is starting to melt.    
  
Henry sleeps on, but she’s past the point where she can do more than deflect.  
  
Cora has been taunting her with the status quo.  James, stabbed and bleeding out somewhere by the Sheriff’s station, by his own father no less.  Snow, missing.  Ruby, chained in silver, slowly eating through her skin.  Thomas, Peter Pan and Frederick, captured and tortured.  All the other women on the run, Mulan injured and fighting Hook’s sailors out by the hospital.  Frankenstein, strangled by his own monster.  
  
Emma, _dead._ A head wound.  A collision with something.  Ceiling coming in on her.  No one could have survived.  
  
They’ve lost so completely that somehow, Regina has ended up as their last man standing.    
  
It’s utterly absurd, and yet oddly fitting.  
  
Another pulse of energy is sent her way, and she sends it skittering to the nearest hyena, who yelps and dances around on his feet for a few seconds before growling at her loudly, licking along exposed teeth.    
  
Hopefully, she’ll be dead before she’s served as a treat.  If not, however--  
  
Her eyes slip shut for just a second, and the next bolt strikes her flat in the stomach; burns out from there, licking at her flesh and skittering all over her body, like electric spiderwebs that bind her and shred her all at once.  
  
“What a waste,” her mother says, shaking her head almost sadly.  “What a--”


	15. Chapter 15

The tip of the sword sticking through her mother’s shoulder seems like a vision, at first, but then turns more real as it’s slid backwards and comes out red-tinged and dripping, in Emma’s shaking, double-gripping hands.  
  
Nobody else seems to have noticed just yet, but behind Emma, Rumpelstiltskin claps his hands together, and all parties in the room fly backwards, abruptly sealed to the wall.  Jafar’s scepter clangs loudly on the marble tiles, and then sweeps across the floor until it lifts to Rumpel’s hand.    
  
He uses it as a cane, slowly stepping into the house, and then steps over to Henry, dismissing the bindings with a flick of his wrist.  
  
“Is he--” Emma asks, letting the sword fall.  
  
“He’s alive,” Regina says, swooning without warning.  Whatever holds her upright at first is magical, but Emma rushes to her side soon after, bracketing her in that insipid, chivalrous way that comes so naturally to her.  “I put him under a mild sleeping spell--”  
  
“You did _what_?” Emma exclaims, eyes blazing.  “Are you out of your fucking _mind?_ ”  
  
“For God’s sake, not like _that_ ,” Regina bites back, and then closes her eyes.  “Only so he wouldn’t have to see--”  
  
“Oh,” Emma says, before staring at everyone else in the room and then getting that flighty, panicked look that only people who cannot cope with reality at all anymore get.  “I--”  
  
Rumpelstiltskin walks around the room calmly, prodding at the helpless villains pinned around her foyer like wax figurines, and then stops in front of Emma and Regina, scepter planted firmly against the tiles.  
  
“I believe we’re running out of options here, darling girls,” he then says, before smiling at them both with some barely repressed glee.  “Anyone here I can interest in a _spell_ to remedy all of this before your loved ones _actually_ die?  I cannot save all of you all the time, be everywhere at once--and as I’m sure Victor would agree, fully and without reservation, _death_ is not a thing we come back from!”  
  
Regina feels Emma’s heartbeat start to stutter, rapidly, but then the sheriff looks at Henry on the floor and closes her eyes.  
  
“What if we go back _now_?  Those of us who are-- _good_?” she asks, awkwardly enough for the stupidity of the word choice to be somewhat forgivable.  
  
“And how are you going to decide who is _good_ , dearie?” Rumpel asks.  
  
Emma makes a face and then steps away from Regina, covering her head with her hands and shaking her head.  “I don’t _know_.  I don’t--”  
  
“Why, there’s quite a lot of support for this … movement we’ve interrupted here.  And not all supporters are _monsters_ like myself and Mayor Mills, oh no.  Some of your less enchanted subjects are merely desperate for a fair life--a life where they can start over, without judgment from the _ruling class,_ ” Rumpel adds, rolling his r’s wildly and with emphasis.  “It seems to me that a former _jailbird_ such as yourself would feel their plight!  So then what?  Who stays?  Who goes?”  
  
“We’ll _figure it out_ ,” Emma snaps at him.  
  
Rumpel smiles, almost kindly.  “I’m sure you would, if given enough time, but...   _tick tock,_ dearie-- _Blue_ can only guard that beanstalk for so long, and with every second that you take to _think,_ another life snuffs out, lost forever.”  
  
“Fuck,” Emma exhales.  It’s only when she turns away from them that Regina sees the wound; and it might not be fatal, but it’s a miracle the girl is still standing with a gaping gash like that in her skull.    
  
Magic in blood, Regina thinks, before looking back at Rumpel.  
  
“Your spell,” she says, trying to control the trembling in her exhausted limbs.  “We all live, if it’s cast.  No exceptions.”  
  
“Except the one, but that is such a _small_ price to pay,” he croons back at her, and then smiles almost sweetly.  “Come on, Re-gi-na;  you always have recognized a winning trade when presented with one.”  
  
Emma looks between them, almost _wounded_ by the idea that this is what it comes down to, for them.    
  
“Ingredients,” she says to Rumpel, flatly.  “All of them, this time--no censorship, and whatever fine print comes with this _spell_ better be clear to both of us, or so help me, I will find a way to make you pay.”  
  
He leans on the scepter a little more heavily, in his pin-striped suit and neatly combed hair, and then nods.  When he starts talking, it’s the most human he’s ever sounded to Regina, and that in and of itself is a reflection on how this is the only exit left for all of them.  
  
“The savior’s hair--no more than a strand, dearie, don’t look so worried.  The pulp from a dragon’s tooth--”  
  
“Oh, _of course_ ,” Emma says, before looking between them.  “Do either of you have one of those lying around or what?”  
  
Regina wonders if her own teeth are visibly throbbing or if it’s just a ghosted sensation.  “I can get one, don’t worry.  What _else_?”  
  
“A thimble of a virgin’s blood, willingly given,” Rumpel says, almost smiling.  “ _Female_ , of course.”  
  
Emma makes an abrupt noise and then, deadpan, says, “I guess we’re going to need a third party to help us out here, unless I’m severely overestimating you two.”  
  
“It won’t be a problem,” Rumpel says, a little sharply, and Regina tries to not roll her eyes at the fact that even with everything that has been done to her, Belle will _probably_ in fact just offer her index finger for a quick jab and squeeze.  “In addition, there are certain environmental conditions that I’m sure you can imagine--”  
  
“The highest point of the town, a new moon, facing north--” Regina says, raising her eyebrows.  
  
“Mmm.  And of course, the _piece_ _de resistance_.  The heart.”  
  
Emma’s mouth sets at the reminder, and then she licks at her lips, briefly.  “Is there _any_ way around that?”  
  
“No.  And, before you try to reinterpret what’s on the page, the way that those in your family have attempted to do for _centuries_ now--it has to be the heart of someone _you_ hate, dearie.  Not just the heart of someone generally loathsome.  So--I suppose we’re back at where we were a few weeks ago--or have you moved further along?”  
  
An interested gleam moves across Rumpel’s face, and Regina can’t bear to see it; looks at Emma’s eyes instead, and watches as slowly, the fire in them simmers down, until she just looks defeated.  
  
“Yeah.  I have,” she then says.  
  
Rumpelstiltskin titters and claps his hands together.  
  
“But _only_ ,” Emma adds, looking to her side, “if Regina is sure she's okay with this.”  
  
It’s amusing, how she’s managing to present this as an offer or a consolation or God knows _what_ ; some sort of real choice, whereby she can either kill her mother or send Henry off with Emma and _pray_ that the girl can keep him alive, somehow.  
  
“You truly hate her,” she says, after a few moments; and her mother lies there, bleeding out in her foyer, making such a _mess_ that--  
  
She looks away again and studies Emma’s face, and watches as it crumples before Emma nods, looking at the bloodied sword next to her mother’s slumped form.  
  
“She's a threat to Henry.  She’s willing to kill Henry just to get to you, Regina.  Anything else, I wouldn’t even be thinking about this but--”  
  
“Yes,” Regina says, forcing herself to not close her eyes, to not falter, to not react at all.  “She’ll kill him, or shape him in her own image.  Whichever suits her ends best, I suppose, once I’m out of the picture.”  
  
“I can’t let that happen,” Emma says, sounding very far away, until a hand reaches for her elbow and curls around it, squeezing gently.  “I know you can't, either.”  
  
A nagging voice, one that sounds much like her always-conciliatory father, tells her that if she wraps her mother up in this spell, they might be able to start over.  They might be able to forge the relationship she’d always wanted; one where she rides without a saddle and her mother loves her for how good she is at it.  One where she grows a garden and they sit in it together, talking of their shared love for nature, and the happiness that comes with lifting pumpkins from the soil after seasons of nourishing them.  One where her apples grow without magic; without interference.  One where she marries a stable boy and...  
  
Her eyes _do_ close, then, and she gathers all the moisture she has left in her mouth; it’s enough for just two words.  
  
“I’m sure.”  
  
In the center of her foyer, the Dark One looks approving for the first time in decades.  
  
“ _That’s my girl,_ ” he says, eyes glittering black like stars that have burned themselves out.  “I take it we have a _deal_ then, ladies?”  
  
Emma shivers, and Regina bites her tongue not to say _I told you so_ ; the princess shouldn’t have needed reminders that all of this would come with a price almost too precious to pay.


	16. Chapter 16

As much as she has mastered various forms of magic herself, the speed at which Rumpel clears the foyer and then props up Cora as if she’s dangling from a puppeteer’s cross is astounding.  He’s so powerful that it’s almost careless, the way he rearranges six people’s positioning and location.  They’re no more than furniture to him.  
  
The idea of _him_ ever bleeding on account of the magic he uses is absurd.  
  
“Time to collect,” he then says, cheerful as a child at a birthday party, before eyeing Regina carefully for a second.  “She’s in the library, is she not?”  
  
“There should be one or two teeth in the basement,” Regina says, and he taps the scepter on the floor a few times before transforming it into his usual cane.  
  
“Very well.  I’ll be _back_ in a jiffy... though _perhaps_ I’ll stay for the main event,” he says, before pointing at Cora with a flourish, and then laughing to himself as he turns to Regina.  “My, what is it they say about medical school, here?  See one, do one, teach one?  You are _well_ overdue to teach, dearie--but what a fine student you have here.”  
  
“Wait, what?” Emma says, looking between them with sudden unease.  
  
“Why, you’ll need to collect the _heart_ , of course, dear Emma,” he says, pleasantly.  “Easy does it--you just reach _right on in,_ and voila!  A heart, pulsing in your hands.  Regina has these … delightful boxes that she likes to keep hers in.  Sentimental, but as we’ll have to carry it to the clocktower--”  
  
A shake of his hand and he’s holding one, which he then tosses to Regina.  She catches it neatly, the cool metal soothing on hands that burn with overuse of magic.  
  
“You didn’t say _that_ ,” Emma says, shock aching through her voice.  “You just said that--that we needed a _heart_.  I thought Regina would just--”  
  
“Add another to my collection?” Regina asks, almost dryly.  
  
“Oh, wouldn’t it be _grand_ if she could just do the dirtiest work for you, hm?” Rumpel asks, before laughing softly.  “I felt much the same way myself once, dearie, but unlike you, I was in a position to actually _make_ her do it.”  
  
Regina knows the air around her just thinned, unintentionally, but she manages to pull back on her long-buried rage and focuses on Emma instead.  “I can show you how.”  
  
“You’re not showing me _anything_ \--you’re--” Emma starts to say, before shaking her head.  “No way.  Deal’s off.  I’m not _pulling_ someone’s _heart_ out of their chest while they’re still _alive_ \--”  
  
“Oh, yes you are,” Rumpel says, in his most deadliest voice.  
  
When Emma opens her mouth to protest once more, the air speeds up so quickly that it knocks Regina off her feet as a side effect, and then she can feel it compress again, pinpointing to a single space right around Emma, before pulling in so tight that she feels her own skin being pulled towards the girl--like a vortex is battling at her from within.  
  
The point where it focuses is clearly Emma’s throat, and she watches in horrid fascination as it starts to squeeze shut.  
  
“Stop--” Emma grunts, clutching at her own neck, but what’s there isn’t tangible.  Just deadly, and as Rumpel narrows his eyes, it squeezes tighter.  
  
“I’ll _stop_ when you _start_.”  
  
Within seconds, Emma looks like she can’t breathe at all anymore; her legs start to go limp, and she slinks down, looking at Regina pleadingly.  
  
A fruitless request.  Whatever magic Regina _can_ direct at her once-mentor, it will not be enough to stop him.  
  
“A deal,” he grits out, sounding grotesque and barely human, “is a _deal_.  I’m willing to collect on my end however I must, dearie.  Don’t think that your _son_ is safe from me just because I’m not _Cora Mills_.  Don’t be so foolish as to think that _she_ is the worst that could happen to you.”  
  
Even with all the strength Regina has amassed, she’s never felt more impotent; it’s akin to being a teenager again and having to learn the hard way that there is just no pleasing some people.  She tries to compel Rumpelstiltskin to stop, but he just looks at her as if to dare her to _try_ something, and ultimately Emma chokes out, “Okay, okay--”  
  
He lets go, and Emma stumbles forward a few steps, clutching at her throat and coughing so hard that it makes her eyes water.  
  
When she looks up, after a half a minute, her face is tear-stricken and veins on her cheeks are gently thrumming below the surface; her lip bleeds, which will make her magic more potent, and so Regina just looks at the woman standing in the middle of the foyer, skin like crumpled paper now that Rumpel has lifted whatever kept her young, and tries to remind herself that feeling _anything_ will only result in hurt.  
  
“I’d like some privacy,” Regina says, after a moment, looking at Rumpel.  “If you don’t mind.”  
  
For a second it looks like he’s going to refuse, just for the sheer pleasure of watching his most recent apprentice kill the original--who just happens to be her mother--but then he bows shortly.  “As you wish.”  Mockingly, he turns to Cora one last time and blows her a kiss, tittering as he leaves the house, wind lashing the door shut behind him.  
  
Emma looks like she doesn’t know whether to throw up or start crying in a more serious way, and after a moment Regina takes a deep breath and says, “Whatever he says, he cannot compel you to do _this_.  It’s not too late for us to choose the alternative; to choose to fight.  I will protect you both the best I can, and--”  
  
“It’s not enough,” Emma says, weakly, like her vocal cords are physically bruised.  “You don’t have enough power.”  
  
Rumpel’s binding spell--still active even outside of the house--is an unexpected blessing, but it doesn’t stop her from seeing her mother’s sickening smile.  She really doesn’t know _what_ to say to trigger the next sequence of events, but then Emma just pulls up her sleeves--as if she’s planning on going _that_ deep into another human’s chest--and stares at her right hand with a look of utter regret, for just a few seconds.  
  
“Let’s just get this over with,” she then says.  
  
…  
  
Never has she touched someone so powerful.    
  
Occasionally, Rumpelstiltskin had demonstrated the reach of his own powers to her, but she learned by example, never osmosis.    
  
Emma has something inside of her that might even surpass _his_ strength, and it simmers in her very core; when they touch, Regina can nearly feel her fingertips start to tingle if she focuses even a little, and so this truly is not going to take an awful lot.  
  
“It’s akin to plucking an apple,” she tells Emma, softly.  “Reach under, curl around, and tug.”  
  
Emma breathes in, and out, and in again--and then says, “Do I need to--is there something I should be saying, or--”  
  
“No--I’ll guide you through it; my knowledge and your natural ability will be more than enough.”  
  
The corner of Emma’s mouth spasms, like she wants to deny that anything inside of her is capable of this, but she seems to think better of it; and then her hand starts to move.  
  
Regina keeps her own hand curved around Emma’s elbow and does not look to the right; just stares straight ahead, through the door that leads to her study; the room where Henry is currently resting, spread out on a sofa that Emma herself had once sampled a glass of apple cider on.  The memory already feels like a different life.  Those days when the most threatening thing in her life was Henry’s insistence that she was cursing all of them seem almost happy now; they are what she thinks of, as she allows herself to feel the steady reach forward of Emma’s shaking arm.  
  
“Do I need to keep my eyes open?” Emma asks, tremulously, and still with that rough squeezed-out tone to it.  She sounds so very small, and after a second Regina shakes her head.  
  
“No.  I’m--” she starts to say, and then just stops.   Any one thing could make Emma lose her nerve, and Emma’s nerves are the only thing that will allow her to keep Henry in  her life, now.  
  
At the point of contact, the arm stops so abruptly that Regina glances at Emma’s elbow, extended and locked, and then says, “Are you ready?”  
  
“Are _you_?” Emma asks in kind, eyes already squeezed shut.  
  
It isn’t a question that requires answering, and so Regina just tugs her lip between her teeth and then sends out the first tendril of magic that will guide Emma’s hand.  It gets caught up in a current of power so quickly that it speeds through Emma’s arm like gunfire; Emma’s hand jerks and skims off the front of Cora’s black dress, and Regina murmurs a soft apology before trying _again_.  
  
“I don’t want to hurry you but--” Emma starts to say, and then stops--just _chokes_ the word down, tensing all over, until Regina’s more or less guiding a live puppet.  This is a level of control she’s never had over another human being and for one second she just revels in it, before remembering that they have a purpose, and magic or not, there is little to stop Emma from just shoving her off.  
  
“There,” she murmurs, when she knows without looking that Emma’s hand has just sunk through the first layer of cloth and skin.  It will feel to her as if her fingers are dipping into a bowl of warm Jell-O.  “Do you feel it?”  
  
When she glances up at Emma’s face, there is an incredibly potent of mixture of terror and joy playing around it, and she knows-- _knows_ \--that the girl will never be the same again.  They say that murder changes someone regardless, but that’s hardly even it; it’s the power that comes with magic.  It’s _darkly_ pleasurable,  and that’s something that Emma Swan is not equipped to handle long-term.  
  
Emma opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a wet click, and Regina squeezes her own hand a little tighter, retaining control.  She cannot look to her right; just _cannot_.  
  
“Like an apple,” she says, and helps Emma’s wrist turn; feels her hand cup, and then--  
  
They stumble backwards, Emma squeezing the heart so tightly that Regina is worried for a second that they’ll have done it all for nothing, but then her grip relaxes and she just stares at Regina’s mother in pure horror.  
  
Cora, of course--for this is her mother _no more_ \--just stares back placidly, and then sits down on the tiled floor with jilted, robotic movements.  The sight of it causes Emma to fumble the heart altogether.  
  
Regina catches it, staring at Emma’s face and the way she’s now looking at her hand--unbloodied, but only as a matter of fact--like she wants to cut it off just to have to never see it again.  Looking at Emma is enough to void any temptation she might have to play with the heart a little; to punish her mother for years of … for _everything_ , before the ultimate punishment will be delivered.  
  
Instead, she places it in the velvet-encased box that Rumpel conjured up and shuts the lid tightly, before looking at Emma again and wondering if she’s going to have to slap the girl to get her to start moving.  
  
Emma’s internally-bruised throat ripples after a few moments, like she’s swallowing down vomit, and then she just turns away from the front door in a slow half-circle and says, “What time are we doing this?”  
  
“Noon,” Regina says, evenly.  “The opposite of midnight.”  
  
Emma glances at her watch and nods.  “We don’t have much time.  We should--”  
  
“Yes, we should,” Regina says, and then glances back at her mother just once.  
  
A _goodbye_ would be too insincere, and so all she thinks is a final, _you have never known what I am capable of, have you?_


	17. Chapter 17

The reality of casting a spell of this magnitude is unromantic.  
  
It takes time, caution, and preparation.  Emma is useless, standing on the outside of the circle she’s spread for the purposes of the actual spell.  Her next role is the final one; one where she serves as the trigger point for everything, and while Regina will have to instruct her on how to _envision_ , it is not yet time.  
  
Rumpel has disappeared again, after dropping off most basic ingredients; a vial of Belle’s blood sits next to one of Maleficent’s teeth, which she’ll halve and core in a while.  For now, it’s herbs and incantations, muttered under her breath, to seal the perimeter of the area where she’ll be casting.  
  
Emma has been frantically dialing numbers for half an hour now; Aurora is alive, wandering through town and updating her on survivors.  The news is grim, for some.  Others are fine.  Snow is still missing, and once again has not carried her phone with her, it seems.   
  
The part of Regina that isn’t singularly focused on the spell considers pointing out to Emma that she’s fooling herself, if she truly thinks she can ever think of her parents as anything _but_ parents, however complicated that must be.  Saying that out loud, though, might break the trance they seem to be operating under, now; where they’re both pretending that what they’re doing is somehow _okay_.  Justified, even.  
  
Henry sleeps on, in the house, and when he wakes up--  
  
“Fuck, just fucking pick _up_ ,” Emma mutters, before looking at her phone and then slamming it down on the ground.  A second later, she slumps against the wall and sinks down it, hands covering her face and entire body shaking.  
  
The cut at the back of her head has been healed, but there is only so much magic can fix.  It’s all superficial power, Regina finally understands.  Everything she’s ever done has only skimmed the surface of the lives she’s lived.  She’s never been able to channel the one thing that would make magic stick; even now, the permanence of their solution depends on someone other than her.  
  
“You must have a clear picture in your mind,” she says, before she can stop herself.  
  
“Of _what_?”  
  
“Of the life we’re going to live.”  
  
Emma lets her hands fall away and looks at her, tear-streaked and miserable.  “You mean like--”  
  
“ _I_ can supply Storybrooke, if you wish.  But I cannot supply the happy endings.  They come from _your_ heart, dear.  You have to be clear on your desires when we cast this spell, or God only _knows_ what we’ll end up with.  And when we arrive--there will be no magic to undo what we have done.”  
  
“Not even true love’s kiss?” Emma asks, after a few moments.  
  
Regina sprinkles some sage onto the floor--straight from a jar in her kitchen, which is so undignified she cannot really bring herself to think about it-- and then looks over.  “If your wish includes a happy ending for Henry, he will not be the trigger that ends the curse.  I’m not sure what that would leave, in your case.  Unless you have designs on some... _man_ I’m simply not aware of.”  
  
Emma looks ahead blankly, her legs splayed awkwardly on the floor, knees locked together.  “So this is it, then,” she then says, as Regina gets to her feet again and reaches for the table salt.  “We do this, and--”  
  
“And the three of us will know, but that’s all.  We’ll know, and we’ll live the lives you envision for us,” Regina says, shaking the salt around and then placing that on the side table as well.  The clock chimes once, signalling the half hour, and then the clock tower falls silent.  
  
“What is it you want?” Emma asks.  “For yours, I mean.  I can’t--”  
  
“My own happiness doesn’t concern me,” Regina says, shortly.  
  
Emma breathes steadily, her chest rising and falling in gradations, and then smiles almost sadly.  “I know what you mean.”  
  
Without warning, Rumpel pops back into the room and observes it slowly, before looking at his wristwatch and tapping at it with a too-long fingernail.  “ _Almost_ ready.”  
  
“Where have you been?” Regina asks, before reaching for the vial of blood and the heart.  
  
“That is _none_ of your business, dearie,” he says, with just a hint of threat, before looking at Emma, ducking down almost comically and assessing her.  “Still with us, Sheriff Swan?”  
  
Emma’s nod is faint, but it’s there, and then he just straightens and tosses his cane into the corner.  
  
“Very well.  Let’s begin.”  
  
…  
  
The room glows a soft pink, the second Emma steps into the circle,  her hands tucked into her back pockets and her gun on display.  
  
Of all the magic she’s ever used, this is somehow both the silliest and the most serious, and Regina takes a deep breath before lifting the box containing her mother’s heart with her mind and floating it into the circle.  
  
Rumpel has dropped all pretense for now, and out of his pocket comes the potion; the _spell_ itself, the one that they merely need to activate.  A glimmering thread inside of cork-stopped bottle shines with yellows and reds and then purples, and Regina stares at it for a long moment before vanishing the box and letting the heart float on its own.  
  
The green tinge to Emma’s skin would be amusing, but Regina waits until her breathing grows measured again and then says, “What happens next is--”  
  
“I think I got it--we drop it all into the bowl, right.”  
  
The fruit bowl at the center of the floor is, to its credit, pure crystal; it will hold the magic well, and Regina nods.  “Each ingredient must pass through your hands, and when that is done, I’ll cast the spell.”  
  
“And then, precisely at _noon_ , we click our heels together thrice and--” Rumpelstiltskin says, before giggling wildly.  “Wrong story, I _do_ apologize.”  
  
Emma looks at him with contempt and Regina just rolls her eyes.  
  
“At noon--I’ll make true on my part of this.  For now, however--”  
  
Before she can even finish, Emma steps forward and wraps her hands around the heart.  
  
The way hearts just crumble, it will never be anything other than horrifying to Regina, nor does she think she will ever be able to look away from it.  
  
“Next,” Emma says, with enough frailty for Regina to close her eyes for a second.  
  
The rest, however, comes easy.  
  
…  
  
Rumpelstiltskin’s watch ticks away the remaining minutes, until only fifty or so seconds remain, and then he says, “All yours, dearie”, in a way that makes Regina feel almost needed.  
  
She sets the bowl alight and then reaches for Emma’s hand.  “Start thinking, Miss Swan.   _Now_.  About everything it is that you want remedied--have it at the front of your mind and do _not_ let go of it.”  
  
“I’ve got it,” Emma says, squeezing her eyes shut and gripping Regina’s hand tightly enough for it to hurt.    
  
The concentration that hits her, the full blast of that magic that sits at the heart of Emma, is so powerful this time that it requires Rumpel’s hand to her other arm to keep her steady; she feels like she’s being strung up by pure power, but all of it is being guided towards the bowl in the center of the floor, pulsing towards it in sweeping waves that feel more powerful than the strongest currents of pleasure she’s ever experienced.  
  
For a few seconds of it, the first few electrifying moments of being snapped into space like a flag caught in a twist of wind, she thinks this will kill her; that her heart will simply not be able to handle what is happening all around it--but then the rush eases, and starts flowing through her.  
  
She feels young again; she feels as she had, once, when Daniel had loved her and held her and been so very real, blood and sweat and hay and _beating heart._ It is everything; a moment stretched into infinity because of how pure and whole she feels again, for the first time in years, and the idea that all of this lies idle in Emma Swan all the time--  
  
It courses through her and then out of her again; she faintly hears Emma moan to her left, which could mean _anything,_ but the girl keeps her eyes screwed tight, keeps her focus, for _once_ in her life does everything right.  
  
The clock starts to chime, and a fine gold mist is starting to rise from the fruit bowl--starting to envelop them all.  
  
“ _There it is_ ,” Rumpelstiltskin exhales to her right, right as the door bursts open.  
  
A woman gasps, and Henry shouts, “ _No, what are you doing, you can’t--_ ”, before slamming into Emma.  
  
The clock chimes twelve.


	18. Chapter 18

In a figurative sense, she supposes this is the second time she’s ended her own life.  
  
Her last attempt at undoing was far more extreme; she’d gone from a desolate cliff’s edge, surrounded by vile and destructive creatures, to a paved surface with a sign marking it _Main Street_.  A clocktower in front of her had chimed, just once, and then the rest of the population of all the kingdoms had come flooding in, scattering into being like gnats flying into a windscreen.  
  
She’d immediately tried to ensnare them, to no avail, and had then stared at her hands in sheer disbelief; what happy ending could come _without_ magic?  Magic had brought her _everything_ that had ever mattered.  
  
Awareness of her own nudity had come when a man owlishly blinked at her and then had blinked at himself, and had finally looked at his hands with the same sense of wonder.  All he’d said, after that, was _Hello_.   _Are you--are you all right?_ , meaning, _Am I all right?  Where am I?  What is going on?_  
  
He hadn’t known to ask those questions, then, and she’d closed her eyes and concentrated until they were all clothed.  Their old apparel had lasted several days, until she’d uncovered a television and had tuned it to a daytime soap opera, absorbing the dress code and mannerisms of this world.  All of her original inaccuracies had knitted themselves into a seamless pattern while she’d slept, and one month later, that owlish man had tipped his hat to her on the street, stuttering out a, “Good morning, Mayor Mills”, like he’d never done anything else his entire life.  
  
“Good morning, Dr. Hopper,” she’d responded, smiling sincerely for the first time in years.  
  
She had felt like she had won, then.  
  
…  
  
Today, it isn’t the same.    
  
Her second death was messy, with far too little preparation and a horrific amount of outside intervention; the memory of Henry barreling towards them, knocking Emma off balance, is overwhelming, and it’s what causes her to shoot upright and clutch at her chest.    
  
Something there still beats, even now.  
  
She reaches for the covers and swings her legs out of the bed, but before she can get very far at all, a strong arm wraps around her waist and holds her in place.   _Everyone’s happy ending,_ she remembers, and feels something that feels an awful lot like hope swell inside of her, supplanting the fear that somehow, Henry isn’t here _with_ them, or wasn’t able to forget the horrors of the last few days of his life.  
  
She whips her head around to look at Daniel, warm and real and with her and not monstrous and--  
  
“Ugh, what _time_ is it?” Emma groans, unclothed and only halfway covered, before cautiously opening one eye and looking at her in a way that Regina can only think of as _familiar_ and _fond_.  “God, Regina, I know that you like to make it to work early but the _sun_ hasn’t even come up yet.  Get back here, will you?”


End file.
